


The Ifrit

by solidus420



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: Complete, Demonic Possession, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Burn, Spirits, i misheard one little line, now it's a sexy ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2019-12-25 21:18:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 53,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18269504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solidus420/pseuds/solidus420
Summary: Phillip awakens from a coma, but all is not well with him. He and Phineas begin to plan a more intimate sort of show, though they soon get more than they bargained for in the form of a dark supernatural entity.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to get weird.
> 
> I thought Phillip's line when he wakes up in the hospital after the fire was, "They're here," which sounds like the start of a horror movie. It took about two seconds for my friend to tell me, "Actually, I think he said, 'You're here.'" To which I replied, "Oh, you're probably right. But it's too late, I've already written an entire ghost story in my head."
> 
> This is the result of that misheard line. Enjoy.

Phineas assured him that all would be well. Whatever else he might be, he was singularly convincing in that regard, and Phillip rested heavily upon his blithe and gladsome reassurances in the weeks following the fire. He refused to admit, to entertain even for a moment, the truth of the situation:

Something was horribly wrong inside him.

A month went by and the dry cough that wracked his body did not abate. He had headaches, and at night he woke half a dozen times, drenched in cold sweat, a cry lodged in his throat, memories of the fire curling back into the corners of the room. Those phantasmal flames left no mark or scar, but the pervasive smell of smoke lingered, clinging to his hair and clothes.

Sometimes shadows ate at the edges of his sight. A few times they had grown bold, and out of their impenetrable darkness resolved vague shapes, like a face or an outstretched hand, but whenever he tried to look towards them, they were gone in an instant. 

He did not need to look to know that they were the last things he wanted to see.

Through all the agonized nights and the exhausted days, he had used every trick and sleight of hand at his disposal to maintain the illusion that everything was fine. He could still perform his duties, on stage and off. For all the world, he was the same polished and costumed dandy, poised so that every facet gleamed in the artificial light.

Hell, leave it to Phineas to see through the act. 

“There’s something different about you lately,” he informed Phillip one day out of the blue. “Something in the eyes. I read it as an excess of character myself, but you’re scaring the ladies. We are a family establishment, after all.”

“Yes,” Phillip said, for lack of anything better. He preferred to save his words, his voice. “I know.”

“I’d hate to think your heart wasn’t in it anymore.”

Phillip was aware that he was being sized up, that Phineas had fixed him with the shrewd and unsentimental look of a gambler surveying his cards or a confidence man assaying a mark. Phillip did not doubt their friendship, nor Phineas’ avuncular feelings towards him, but he was also more aware than most of the way every relationship Phineas maintained came with a ledger attached. The numbers might tip back and forth from black to red, but he was at heart a businessman even before he was a showman, and he wouldn’t let anyone run a tab with him for too long.

For Phillip, who had grown up with money, who had never known the hard and unproud struggles of the poor, it might have been easy to resent that aspect of his mentor. He could have fanned the sudden spark of resentment within his chest, kindled it into a blaze that would destroy them both in an instant.

Something kept him back. He felt himself born down, dragged under the wheels of the sheer force of Phineas’ personality.

“My heart’s in it,” he said. “As much as my pocketbook is. I’m just a little worn down.”

“Take a break,” Phineas told him. “I've got a line on a place in the Swiss Alps. They say it’s where _Frankenstein_ got written. Where those poets had a nice, cozy little party.”

Phillip had never heard Diodati described in such terms, but somehow the way Phineas said it fit. He was, after all, a purveyor of wholesome family entertainment.

“The season’s almost over,” Phillip told him. “I’ll work until then.”

Judging by Phineas’ expression, he appreciated that answer immensely. It made Phillip feel very competent and mature: a man doing his duty in spite of physical discomfort and hardship, in the fashion of the Spartans.

“A break is all you need,” Phineas said, obviously pleased now that a course had been decided. “A whole weekend off, and then we’ll start planning our next move.”

His hand rested momentarily on Phillip’s shoulder. No doubt he felt the way that the muscles there had compacted into knots, the way Phillip’s body seemed to be drawing down into itself. Phineas chose to ignore it, though. He was a great narrativizer, and that which did not fit the tale he wanted to tell was suitable to be thrown out with so much bath water. Though he may have found his calling in ripping back the veil which concealed all the grotesqueries among them, he still knew better than to let them run free in the world. Better to pen up all that which was unpleasant, cordon it off from conventional bourgeois sensibilities so that the naked truth of the world might not intrude upon the illusion.

Phillip's forehead furrowed and he felt a pinpoint of pain at the place where his brows came together. It was as if the flesh had been divoted by the tip of a blazing finger. He'd infrequently had such cynical thoughts before, but now was not the time for an encore.

He had to get his feet back on _terra firma_ ; he had to clear his head. He had to get back to work, do something with his hands. That was all.

Hesitantly, he glanced at Phineas, as if seeking approval for his unspoken decision. Phineas reflected little back at him; he was already withdrawing his hand, already planning the next edifice to scale, alone if he had to.

“Doors open in an hour,” he said. “You should work on some new material. Try to show a little enthusiasm.”

Though Phillip knew as well as anyone that the glamour of their act had to be refreshed frequently with the blood of novelty, he was annoyed at the insinuation. Had he not already learned from the best all the artistry inherent in a twitch of the hips, a flick of the wrist, a gleam in the eye? He could have done the work in his sleep, seduced the most hard-hearted of them with a wink and a smile, and he surely didn’t need every little thing spelled out for him.

It was too late now to protest. Phineas was already in motion, buoyed away on some enigmatic and private current. Phillip watched him go, but only for a moment. More work, Phineas had suggested, as if that were a cure he had not thought of. Phillip was offended by the notion, for he came from the same stalwart, Puritan stock as his mentor. Though divergent their family fortunes had been, Phillip had been raised on the same austere maxims about honest work and idle hands.

No, throwing himself into his job had done little to ease the burning pain in his chest, or to stave off the panic that gripped him when he thought of the flames. Work would not stop his sporadic and incessant cough either, but he did know one thing that would help with that.

Phillip had stashed the bottle of whiskey in his private trailer, even going so far as to pry up a floorboard to conceal it. Phineas had been a great teetotaler since returning from Europe, and like all teetotalers was determined that no one have a moment of fun without him. He had banned drinking from all of his ventures and amusements. Phillip supposed that such rules might not apply to him, but he had not tried to find out; he had no desire to explain or justify himself. Once he started that, he knew he might not be able to stop.

For the moment, the drinking was under control. He rationed it out to himself as if it were medicine and enjoyed it in the same capacity. 

That, too, was something new. In his dissolute youth, before the indignity of working for a living, Phillip had gamely cycled through most of the vices endemic to the bored young men of his class. Opium dens in San Francisco, absinthe cafes in Paris, the red light district of London, those singular and unnameable pleasures of French Algiers: All was but grist for the mill of scandal and rumor, the cultured entertainments which were the bread and butter upon which dined those voracious members of New York royalty who would not be caught dead at a freak show.

Phillip supposed that even then he had been an entertainer, a born showman who gave them all the sport they needed to keep from dying of boredom.

He could have given up the act anytime he wanted. In spite of the ever-present whiff of scandal about him, there had always been genuine interest - a Boston Winthrop, even! - but Phillip had long ago admitted to himself that he preferred _danseurs_ of dubious talent and Russian “princesses” of dubious Caucasian stock.

In the end, it was not the promise of a smart match, a mingling of fortunes and bluish blood, that had convinced him to turn his back on that old life. Admittedly, when the Astors came knocking he had considered it. A redemption arc would have been just the thing to end his tale of a wayward badboy, seduced like Augustine by the temptations of the world.

It would have been a story with the titillating thrill of Shaherazade and the didacticism of Dickens. Something that the jaded aristocracy of New York and the grim-faced ministers of Providence could have enjoyed in equal measure. The gossip might have endured for a long time, long past the point when he had become old and complacent. 

It could have been his legacy.

But, in the end, Phillip couldn't go through with it. He hadn't been able to shake the feeling that there was something wrong, something missing. He could scarcely explain to anyone that it had been an instinctive aversion to deus ex machina that had led him to break the engagement. They would not have understood, no one would have, save perhaps for Phineas, but on the subject of their respective pasts the two of them had never spoken.

If Phineas didn't want to talk about it, or to know, then that was his right. Phillip had always been under the impression that they were business partners and nothing more. Close, yes, but you had to be close to a man to trust him with your money. There was no need to get sentimental about it. That bonds-of-manly-friendship act was as old as Homer and it had been done to death by now.

Though, if Phillip was honest with himself, which he still frequently was even at the expense of his psychological comfort, he had to admit that there was another reason too. Though he would have been loathe to admit it, deep down Phineas was a very good man. The most trouble he'd ever been in was an illicit kiss. At the same time, he had the touchy pride of a fellow who understood himself to be very experienced. He did not want to know that there were other worlds out there, parties that he would never be invited to.

It would wound him to realize that Phillip had passed an entire life before they had met, that a meaningful existence had not started the instant Phineas had appeared to offer it. 

Let him persist in his pleasant fictions, his excess of sequins and paste jewels and gold braid. They all did.

Since the fire, Phillip was beginning to think that certain illusions of his had been torn away. Not the least of which was that life was infinite and there would always be time for whatsoever he might want to do. No, he could finally say with visceral certainty that he understood the abrupt way things could end, or change, or become dramatically deformed.

Rather than spur him to take some dramatic action, the brush with death had paralyzed him. He had retreated back into the familiar motions of the ringmaster, the familiar words of the carnival barker, the familiar faces that almost never stared at his scars anymore.

And the whiskey. That, certainly, had never hurt a thing. A good stiff drink or two always felt like coming home.

Phillip poured himself a measure from the bottle. One inch, then another to grow on. Just enough to keep the cough under control, he reasoned.

He put the drink back with a jerk of his chin. Then he kept very still, scarcely breathing at all, as he felt it move through him. First down, past his burning and throbbing lungs, into the secret subterranean places in his body. It was a liquid that descended, a solid that lodged itself into the pit of his stomach, and then a vapor that rose upward to obscure his mind.

An amber cloud fogged his vision, as if he saw everything through a haze of gold. For an instant, he remembered the painting that had hung in his father's study, the one with Zeus and Danae as its subject. In his youth it had fascinated him, though never so much as the samovar - discreetly hidden away and never used - emblazoned with Ganymede and the eagle. Now there was a story he hadn't heard until much later. Lacking in a traditional three-act structure, but emotionally satisfying all the same. It filled a niche that Phillip had not known was missing until that moment...

***

When Phillip opened his eyes next, it was to the sound of a heavy hand pounding on the door of his trailer. It was one of the hired girls come to fetch him, to tell him that it was time to earn his keep.

The bottle of whiskey was still in his hand, and before Phillip was aware that he was going to do it, he had poured another tumbler. He scowled down at the drink that had appeared somehow unasked in front of him. That had never happened to him before, or perhaps it had been happening all this time, without him even being aware of it.

Whatever the case, there was no time now to contemplate the phantom fits and starts of his body. He downed the glass at a go, and made to stand.

His head swam and his stomach lurched. For a moment he was unsteady on his feet, but then he found his equilibrium. Yes, yes, he felt much better now; the way a man ought to feel on the eve of a great artistic triumph. 

Collecting himself, he paused by the dressing table. The face that stared back at him from the mirror was pallid and gaunt; he almost did not recognize it as his own. With a practiced hand, he raked his pomaded hair back into place, painted two rails of stage blush onto his cheeks, caught his lower lip between his teeth and bit down hard until it swelled into a reddish pout.

That was better. Not great, but good enough for facework.

Something still wasn’t right, though. The longer he stared at his reflection, the more perplexed he became. He felt disassociate, disconnected from his own appearance, as if his mirror image had become an unsmiling doppelganger, alike in form but possessed of an inscrutable will all its own.

Then, all at once, he realized what had changed. There, in the iris of his right eye, a black mote had appeared. It stood out starkly against the pale blue: a dark spot, the size and shape of a lemon seed. 

Phillip’s stomach dropped; he felt cold fingers tighten around his heart. The sinking sensation passed, but the damage was done. It was as if a black flower had sprouted his chest, winding its many roots over and around his ribcage.

He rubbed at the offending eye, digging his knuckle in so hard that he saw bright flashes of color in the darkness behind his closed lid. When he blinked them away, the black spot had not changed or moved. Phillip had the distinct sense that something deep in its dark pit was staring back at him.

Aware that his hand was not as steady as it had been, he reached for his face again. He forced himself not to blink as he made to press the tip of one finger against the sticky surface of the eye itself. Before he could, though, the mote twitched.

Against all common sense and all that seemed possible, Phillip saw it move. He jerked his hand back as if it had been burnt, but the black spot was already in flight. It shimmered and darted like a small fish, making a circuit of his iris before vanishing back into the blackness of the pupil.

Phillip felt nothing, but when the spot disappeared back inside his eye his ears popped as if he had just surfaced out of deep water.

Though he could no longer see it, he could well-imagine the black mote wriggling up his optic nerve, tearing through the delicate membrane inside his skull, burrowing into his brain…

His trailer door banged open. Phillip started at the sound, whipping around to face it and meeting only the bored and unimpressed face of the hired girl.

“You coming or not?” she asked impertinently. “It ain’t a full house or nothing.”

“I’m coming,” Phillip gasped out, but he made no move to. Both hands were fastened tight to the edge of the dressing table, reluctant to loosen their grip.

The girl shrugged. “I’ll leave Her Majesty to finish putting on her face. I can warm up the crowd a bit myself.”

She left him there, banging the trailer door shut behind her. Phillip was alone once more, in a room that seemed darker and more forbidding than it had a moment ago. He did not dare look back to the mirror, terrified of what further monstrous revelations it might have in store for him. More than his own unfamiliar features, more even than the strange scar in his eye, he had the distinct feeling that if he looked into the glass now there would be more than one face peering back at him.

Forcing his fingers to uncouple from the edge of the table, Phillip snatched up the whiskey. He took one last pull, directly from the bottle this time, before thrusting it back into its hiding place. Without looking back into the dark corners of the trailer, he dashed out into the backlot.

The Big Top glowed in the distance, an oasis of light in the deepening darkness. Phillip set his sights on it and did not stray once. If he turned neither to the right nor the left, he could not see the clusters of eyes - glowing bright, too bright! - that stared back at him from the shadows.

Somewhere in the distance a scream rang out. From the direction of the menagerie; only a fox, then, or a cougar, registering its displeasure at being caged. Still, the sound pursued him, raising chills down his spine.

Phillip walked faster. He was almost running now, and there was a spreading patch of clammy sweat on the back of his white shirt in spite of the coolness of the evening. He was out of breath by the time he found himself ducking between canvas flaps. 

Hands came out of the shadows, stuffing him into his coat and hat with all the delicacy and ceremony of shoving a clove up the ass of a Christmas goose. They pointed the way, and he followed. 

He stumbled into the center ring, where the hired hand who promised to warm up the crowd reluctantly ceded the stage to him. She had plucked a pair of snakes out of the reptile house and was coaxing them into kaleidoscopic spirals around her arms, twining them around her throat like a noose.

An act, an act, all another act. He would have to act now, too, and make it count. This was Hamlet at the Globe, Argan at the Louvre. Night after night, the same soliloquy, the familiar _pas de deux_ , the interminable aria, all at once. All mingled together, so that one could not be separated from the next, so that all things became one and the same.

Phillip raised his eyes to the gas lights high above. He could see the silhouette of the audience, though barely. They, too, had melted together into an undifferentiated mass that swam and wavered like a mirage in the desert.

He felt that a glass barrier had been erected between them, so thick and solid that not even their heated yelps and moans of anticipation could penetrate it. They were beyond his reach now, and he could beat against the current until he strength failed him but he would be inevitably swept away in the end.

There was another, though. One who walked always beside him, ever since he had come back from the fire. In his half-drunk, half-delirious state he felt sharply aware of it. Aware that he had been aware for a long time, of that cold breath on his neck, that icy hand that threaded through his hair, that shape beside him in bed at night, that weight on his chest that strangled him in his sleep.

It was time for them to formally meet.

His eyes still turned upward, Phillip clutched his hands to his aching chest in the attitude of a female saint. There was something up there, swirling around the rafters. It was descending now, past the gas lights, past the trapeze lines, billowing out as it came so that it obscured everything else.

As it covered him, Phillip tried to draw a breath but the air turned to ash in his throat. His knees unhinged and he fell. It seemed to take forever to hit the ground. In fact, he never felt it when he landed.


	2. Chapter 2

Phineas’ connection at the City Hospital - the one who kept him apprised of the human oddities that passed through their city - had a passion for drink that very nearly equaled his passion for gossip. Since the unfortunate scandal in Europe, Phineas had made it his mission to abstain from the former, though he admitted he retained a taste for the latter. That was why he still occasionally found himself nursing a seltzer and picking up the tab for the distinguished physician.

Today, his generosity had landed him a curious reward. Doctor Weber had, with his precise surgical touch, turned the conversation to the topic of Phillip Carlyle. Though Phineas didn’t think his protege would appreciate having his recent dirty laundry aired in public, he was confident that any story he might concoct would be neater than whatever the society pages could come up with. Better that he take the reins personally, spare Phillip what embarrassment he was able. It was the least he could do.

The young scion was recovering well, Phineas assured the doctor. He had a room in Phineas’ own home - all but empty now that Charity had taken the girls to Berlin so Caroline could attend dance academy - and a squadron of very severe and competent nurses to look after him. It was more comfortable than the State Hospital, and a good precedent to set if Phillip was going to make a habit of this sort of thing.

“A touch of nerves, that’s all,” Phineas said with perfect confidence. “Those rich folks all have bad nerves, concomitant with their diets of caviar, ambrosia, and rose water.”

Doctor Weber, who was a good deal more than tipsy by that point, was in no condition to pick up on his sarcasm. “That one always did have a weak constitution. When he was young, it was always one thing or another. It was pretty touch and go for a while in there; we had an open bet on whether or not he was going to make it. But eventually one of those therapeutic baths or faith healers they were always dragging him off to took and he started to improve.”

Phineas frowned into his drink, wishing for the first time in a while that it had a bit more horsepower to it. “How long were you sitting on that piece of information?”

Weber shrugged, a ponderous German shrug that minimized all of Phineas’ concerns in an instant. “I was under the impression that you had the situation under control.”

“I do,” Phineas responded instantly. Everything was as precisely in-hand as it had ever been. “Though I might have appreciated the warning before I dressed him up like a show pony and set him jumping through hoops and swinging from the rafters.”

“And walking through fire,” Weber said.

“I can hardly take the blame for that,” Phineas replied, his jaw set and a steely glint coming into his eye. “He made his own choices.”

“Well, then, he’s better off than almost all of us,” Weber replied, signaling for another drink. “Though it’s my understanding that you made some irrational choices of your own when the situation arose.”

“If you mean going in after him, I would have done the same for any of them. They’re my performers, my investment. You think I’m not going to protect that?”

Again, that ponderous shrug that made all Phineas’ words at once preposterous and inconsequential. “I understand. You only have daughters. A man longs for primogeniture, to propagate the patriarchal line of succession…”

“You ought to be careful. A less understanding fellow might sock you in the nose for using those five dollar words.”

“That is why I consort only with sensitive artists,” Weber replied. “Not common brutes.”

“I’m going now.”

“Pay the tab on your way out. I seem to have misplaced my wallet.”

***

Phineas wasn’t sure what to do with the information he had been given, though it stuck with him like a hunch. It was inconceivable to him that he knew nothing about Phillip’s past, as if the younger man had not existed at all prior to their first meeting. It seemed an oversight now, that for all the years they had spent as partners, he’d never actually gotten a feel for what might drive someone to the eccentric lengths Phillip had gone to.

Now wasn't the most auspicious time to start. Not with Phillip laid up in the big airy attic room, intermittently conscious, with that rattle in his chest every time he breathed. It sounded like the wind through dry grass, and the physician Phineas had brought up from Boston said that it was a sure sign of scarring on the lungs. He saw it in mill hands, coal miners, workers on the floor of asbestos factories. And, occasionally, in those who had survived the inhalation of a great deal of smoke.

There was no cure, the doctor said, but it was a condition that did not always kill, at least not right away. Phillip might have another five years in him, another ten with luck. Saving his voice, resting his body, perhaps being read to as long as the material did not excite him too much.

Phineas had not told Phillip yet. The doctors were all quacks anyway. There was no sense getting all worked up when Phillip would surely pull through yet.

In the attic room, the curtains had been drawn against the afternoon sun, leaving shadowy pools on the hardwood floors. The big antique bed that dominated the room was draped in starched sheets, kept obsessively clean by the rotating shifts of nurses. Usually, there would have been one with Phillip, but for the moment the chair next to the bed was empty. Phineas dusted the seat off with a sweep of his handkerchief and sat down.

Phillip lay on his back, his hands folded over his breast. There was a blue tint to his lips and the translucent skin of his closed lids. A symptom of oxygen deprivation, the physician had said.

He seemed deep in sleep, and Phineas thought nothing of reaching out to brush a lank lock of hair from Phillip’s forehead. But no sooner had his fingers come in contact with Phillip’s skin then his eyes opened. There was none of the quivering hesitation of an invalid waking from sleep. One moment Phillips was dead to the world, and the next his blue eyes were fixed with perfect clarity on Phineas’ face.

“Anne, darling, you seem different somehow.” His voice was soft but not slurred, the wry smile that came to his lips wan but set along familiar lines. “Your face is fairly ravaged by grief.”

Phineas drew his hand back as if he had been burnt. Phillip did not acknowledge the errant touch, save to narrow his eyes slightly as it was withdrawn.

“Anne sent a postcard from Denver. I didn’t tell her anything yet. If I telegraph, she’ll come back, you know.”

“Vaudeville is profitable,” Phillip said with a shrug. “I think we ought not worry her too much.”

“It’s your choice,” Phineas said.

Again, there was that slight narrowing of the eyes, that expression that conveyed nothing but shrewd thoughtfulness. Phineas found himself searching Phillip’s face for something - anything - more.

That was when he saw it.

“Your eye…”

That had an affect on him. Phillip sucked in a sharp breath, as if he had been struck, which immediately set him to coughing. Phineas at first jerked away, as if it were his proximity that had caused it, but when the fit didn’t pass he was compelled to lean in once more, sliding an arm behind Phillips’ back and helping him sit up straighter.

Phillip kept a hand pressed to his lips until the coughing had subsided. He lowered it quickly, but not so quickly that Phineas did not see the smear of blood on palm. Phillip cannily hid it beneath the covers, and then he raised his eyes once more.

Phineas dreaded the moment their gazes locked once more, but when they did he saw that Phillip’s blue irises were just that - clear blue and unmarked by a single blemish.

“What about my eyes?” he rasped.

“Nothing,” Phineas said quickly. “Nothing at all.”

He eased Phillip back to the pillows and made to withdraw. “You need your rest.”

Phillip caught him by the wrist before he could slip away. His grip was surprisingly strong. “Wait. There’s something I have to tell you.”

Phineas allowed himself to be drawn back. “What’s on your mind?”

“We aren’t alone.”

He said it so calmly, matter-of-factly, that for a moment Phineas almost took it as fact. He felt a shiver crawl down his spine, the press of unseen eyes on his back, and he had to check himself before he whipped around.

“It’s just me,” Phineas told him firmly, as much to convince himself of that fact as Phillip. “Say whatever you need.”

“You’re wrong,” Phillip went on in that same conversational tone, that same calm recitation of the facts. “ _They_ are here.”

“Who are you talking about?”

Phillip’s eyes narrowed; his lips made the shape of a smile without any of the feeling behind it. It showed the tips of his teeth, which seemed suddenly very white and very sharp in the dim light. 

“I think something came back with me.”

Phineas sat back hard in his seat. It was the last thing he had expected to hear, the last thing he wanted to hear from his level-headed, dependable partner. The one who had bailed them all out when Phineas was broke and at the end of his rope. Could it be that he was acting out since Anne was away? Finally cracking under the pressure? Reverting to that sickly boy he had once been?

None of that seemed possible. Not with Phillip watching him so calmly, completely collected, waiting for a reply as if he had done nothing more outrageous than ask Phineas to a late supper.

Then, all at once, he understood, and his face broke into a smile.

“Well hell, kid. I knew you were a showman, but I didn’t think you had an act like that in you.”

“Excuse me?” Phillip replied.

“You were ready to admit it even before I was. There ain’t no more circuses or travelling shows in your future, but you’ve got another act already planned out. And you couldn’t have picked a better one. That spirit medium stuff really sells. I can see it now: ‘Step into the parlor of Prince Alucard, last of a Wallacian line of witches and occultists. He alone knows what lies beyond the veil.’” 

Phineas laughed, a short delighted sound. “We’ll reach a whole new audience. I love it.” 

Phillip watched him placidly without stirring or speaking. His eyes were bright, like two glowing coals within his white face. A black mote appeared in one, slowly circling the periphery of the iris before disappearing back into the blackness of his pupil. This time, though, Phineas paid it little attention. They were back on familiar footing, and it could only have been a trick of the light.

“Yes, Mr. Barnum,” he said in his dry and papery voice. “A spirit medium act. That is precisely what I have in mind.”

“I sure taught you well.”

“I am ever grateful for your tutelage. Someday, I will show you properly just how beholden I am.”

Phineas raised his eyebrows. There had been something Phillip’s tone just then that, something that worked in tandem with his frank and unblinking stare, to leave Phineas feeling curious indeed.

“You just worry about resting up,” he said. “I’ll put some rumors out there, work up the costumes. Do you want a tux and tales or some kind of gypsy get-up? No, don’t answer. I’ll play it by ear. I suppose you’ll be a big hit with all those lady spiritualists either way.”


	3. Chapter 3

Phillip’s recovery progressed quickly once they had set their plan in motion, so quickly in fact that Phineas, for all his ingenuity, hardly had time to finish making preparations before his rising star was back on his feet.

When two weeks had passed and Phillip had not spat blood once, the doctors began to mutter about miracles. Phineas didn’t pay them any mind, save for how he might weave that word into the narrative he was busy crafting. He knew that it was no divine intervention that had set Phillip right, but rather the promise of a new and ingenious project. Try as he might to persuade the world otherwise, Phillip was the type who was only really happy when he was working. One day, he’d keel over on stage like that Federici fellow, but that, Phineas was now convinced, would not happen for a long time.

He liked to think that his optimism had played some part, however small, in Phillip’s improved condition. Phineas did try to remain cheerful, always taking care that there were flowers on hand, the linens were washed and the pillows fluffed. He felt a bit like a nursemaid himself, featherclucking about the airy attic room and ensuring that everything was in its place.

Phillip seemed content to maintain an elegant and enigmatic silence, though he watched everything that transpired closely. He was no longer delirious or faint, but he had become silently contemplative, like an anthropologist observing the customs of a new society.

Every time he was up there, every time he caught wind of Phillip’s frictionless blue eyes sliding over and by him, Phineas felt he ought to say something. He should at least strike up a conversation with the kid; it really was about the longest either of them had spent sitting still in years.

But whenever he tried to speak, nothing would come out. He, Phineas Barnum, the great speechifier, was all out of words.

At least Phillip didn’t seem to mind. At the end of the third week of his convalescence, he woke at dawn and asked for breakfast. He ate voraciously, and then, before any of the nurses could think to stop him, rose from bed and dressed for the first time since his collapse. Phineas heard about it all on the stairs, while he trailed the stern, no-nonsense Nurse Lewandowski up to the attic room.

“Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” the nurse said, showing Phineas by the tilt of her chin and the purse of her lips precisely what she thought of the matter.

From where he was standing, Phillip looked just fine. His back was to Phineas, but he could tell that Phillip’s spine was straight, his shoulders back, his head held high as if he were balancing a book atop it. Though it might be possible to manufacture reasonable facsimiles, there was no mistaking his authentic finishing school posture or choirboy diction for a mere knockoff.

“I’ve decided it’s time I start earning my keep,” Phillip said without turning around. He remained facing the mirror, straightening his cuffs with a pair of swift tugs. “I wouldn’t want you to think I’m content to run up a debt.”

Phineas nodded to Miss Lewandowski, dismissing her. Once she had gone out, shutting the door quietly behind her, Phineas started forward. “I wasn’t worried about that. We’ve got our business venture, don’t we?”

“Yes,” Phillip said, his voice low. “I wouldn’t dream of missing it.”

He turned abruptly, executing a sharp heel pirouette that brought them face to face. Phineas did not realize until that moment how near he had strayed to Phillip’s turned back - near enough to touch - and he leapt back as if caught red-handed in some mischief. 

Phillip didn’t seem bothered by the closeness. He even smiled as he said, “My friend, you’re alone here, aren’t you?”

Taken aback by the question, Phineas could do nothing but stammer out the truth. “Well, yes. For the time being. Charity’s off in Europe for the kids’ schooling. She says it really is better over there, for some things at least.”

“Like what?”

“Take this dance school they’re going to. It’s a hundred years old if it’s a day. I’m sure they do fine things, but a hundred years ago that place down the street was a peanut field.”

“Great age does afford many chances for stories to creep in. Tell the right tale and respectability becomes a natural epilogue.”

“Yeah, but they’ve got some pretty good instructors on staff, too.”

“No doubt. The Berlin Academy is one of the best in the world.”

Phineas found himself studying the younger man’s face a moment. Phillip held himself very still accepting his scrutiny without complaint.

“Kid,” Phineas said at last. “Are you sure you’re alright? You don’t need to push yourself on my account.”

“I’m fine,” Phillip replied. “I assure you, I feel much better.”

“You’re still pretty pale.”

“I have been long out of the light.”

“And your eye…”

Phineas had been trying to avoid mentioning that particular elephant in the room, but he knew that he would have to address it eventually. That black mote was back, swimming in the blue of Phillip’s iris. Though Phineas knew it was almost certainly his imagination, today the spot seemed bigger.

Phillip’s smile vanished in an instant. Slowly, he lifted his hand pressing his fingers into the hollow beneath the offending eye.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he said. “I don’t feel anything.”

“What did the doc say about it?”

“Nothing.” Phillip’s voice had dropped to a dry, raw whisper. “He said nothing. What do you want to say about it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s some kind of scar. You can see okay, right?”

“Oh, I see everything.” 

All at once, Phillip dropped his hand. Phineas could see that he had dug his nails into the soft flesh beneath his eye, leaving three red crescent marks on the skin in the shape of his nails.

“Careful,” Phineas said, reaching for him with what he had to confess was more than a little awkwardness. He had no idea what he would do if he actually touched Phillip, how he might comfort him or even stop him from inflicting further harm.

And yet, somehow, he was not entirely relieved when Phillip drew back before they could touch, out of his reach.

“I need to get some air,” he announced. “I hope you’ll come with me.”

***

Phineas ended up showing him the house. It wasn’t until later that he realized it might be interpreted as showing off, putting his wealth on display in the hopes that Phillip would be impressed.

Fortunately, Phillip did not seem to take it that way. He followed gamely on Phineas’ heels while he got the grand tour, saying little and seeming to see even less. It wasn’t until they reached the disused parlor where Phineas had been storing some of the props and costumes from previous acts that he stirred to life.

His attention settled on a rack of fencing equipment pushed into one corner. “Are you a sporting man?”

Phineas shrugged. “I picked up a thing or two. If you’re asking for a friendly bout, I can pencil it into my calendar. I’m not sure it’s the best for your condition, though.”

“I just need to get my blood moving,” Phillip said, moving towards the rack. “I’ll be back to my old self in no time.”

He selected two foils - the lightest swords on the rack - and tossed one over to Phineas. He caught it, barely, snatching it by the hilt to pluck it out of the air. When he looked over again, Phillip was making an experimental pass in the air with his own sword, drawing a looping figure eight with the tip. He touched the pommel to his forehead in a salute, and then assumed an en-garde stance.

“Be gentle with me, Phineas,” he said, quietly. And then he was in motion.

Phineas saw him dart forward, light on the balls of his feet, one arm tucked in close to his body to deliver a thrust. He reeled back with considerably less grace than the sport called for, bending back at the waist so the point of the blade sailed past his shoulder without making contact. Phillip recovered, dancing back lightly, out of reach.

“Take it easy on an old man,” Phineas said with a laugh, though in truth he was unsettled by the aggressive attack. But Phillip had already retreated back to first position, where he waited with his heels pressed primly together and the foil resting at his shoulder. His lips were slightly parted, his eyes glittering with anticipation.

“Then show me some of that fighting spirit,” Phillip replied. He pushed off on his back leg, into another attack.

This time, Phineas was as ready as he was going to get. He parried the first strike, then a second down low that turned out to be a feint. Phillip brought the tip of the blade up in an arc and the ball on the end made contact with Phineas’ shoulder.

“That’s a touch,” Phillip said, with a breath of laughter on the edge of his voice.

“So it is.” Phineas moved to rub at the ball of his shoulder where the foil had left a stinging welt, but before he could get there, Phillip turned his wrist, rotating the blade so that its point snapped into place in the hollow of Phineas’ throat, under his chin.

Phineas froze, his hands held out at his sides. Slowly, Phillip inclined his blade, just an inch or so, fitting it under Phineas’ chin and forcing it back.

Before he could speak or move, Phillip withdrew once more, retreating back to first position. “Tell me about this new show of yours. I have to hear it all.”

“Sure,” Phineas replied. Though he could well believe this was all some strange joke on his young protege’s part, he was not familiar with such esoteric humor. Still, now that Phillip wanted to talk business he felt that he was at last on recognizable ground. He made a couple of experimental thrust, which were deflected easily, with little more than a flick of Phillip’s wrist.

“I’m seeing you in silk brocade,” he went on. “We’ll spring for the expensive stuff. People are definitely going to be looking. But in the parlor where you do your, uh, acts--”

“Seances,” Phillips said. He sprang forward as he said the word, landing another hit on Phineas’ unprotected midsection. “The term is seances.”

“Right, your seances. Anyway, we’ll keep it dark in there. Just some candles to set the mood. That means we can cut expenses on the props. I know a fellow who can get us a bunch of crystals at a fraction of the cost…”

It seemed that Phillip had lowered his guard, and Phineas chanced an advance. To his surprise, the younger man retreated, dancing back almost to the perimeter of the room. Phineas gave chase, pursuing him with springing sideways fencers steps. It seemed that he would corner Phillip and at least be able to land a hit, but just when it looked like Phillip would run up against the far wall he turned lightly, pirouetting on the ball of one foot.

Phineas’ thrust hit the wall, leaving a scar on the paper. Phillip dodged around behind him, tipping the point of his foil back over his shoulder to land a touch on Phineas’ back before the older man could turn to face him.

“Black,” Phillip said, smiling. “I want to wear black. I want everything to be black.”

Phineas took his time returning to en-garde. He used the delay to size Phillip up. Though the younger man was still pale as death, with two spots of feverish color high on his cheeks, he did not seem winded in the slightest. There was not so much as as single drop of sweat on his immaculate brow; not so much as a single lock of hair out place.

Phineas could not say the same about himself. He had fairly sweated through his shirtsleeves, and his calves already ached and threatened to cramp up. He wondered how long Phillip intended to keep this up. He did not feel that he could bow out quite yet, at least not without forfeiting something in Phillip’s favor that he would be pressed to get back.

“Black works,” he said. “Hides the rigging and wires better. I’ve been researching that, too. Turns out there are some remarkable things you can do with a little smoke and mirrors. And there’s a trick where they run a string under the table, jiggle it a little to make it move--”

“That will be fine,” Phillip said sharply, cutting him off.

Phineas’ eyes narrowed at the abrupt change of tone. “Say, how do feel about a Persian character? We can get some of that paint they put around their eyes over there. Give the customers something else to focus on while we work the pulleys and cranks.”

As Phineas spoke the last word, Phillip sprang forward into a lunging strike. But he was getting predictable, and this time Phineas managed to deflect the blade. “I’ll take that as a yes?”

Phillip worked in a couple more thrusts, hardly serious, more like a cat batting at its trapped prey. “Do you find my eyes striking?” he asked.

Phineas hesitated, and it cost him another hit, directly in the center of his chest. Phillip hadn’t checked himself at all, and even with the bulb on the edge of the blade, the strike smarted a bit.

“I…” he started to say. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, a knot in his throat. He had no idea what Phillip wanted him to say, what he even could say. When he searched his protege’s face for clues, he found nothing but a faint and inscrutable smile reflected back at him from behind Phillip’s raised blade. 

“I heard something to that effect,” he said at last. “I thought it was common knowledge.”

He saw Phillip cock the foil to attack, but when he actually stepped forward to thrust Phineas lost track of him entirely. He moved in a blur, too fast to properly follow. Phillip caught his blade near the pommel, winging it out of Phineas’ hand without so much as a do-you-please. 

The foil clanged against the hardwood floor. Phineas turned to follow it with his eyes, but he only got about a quarter of the way through the motion before he felt the side of Phillip’s blade pressed up against his throat, right against the blue pulse of his carotid artery.

“I think you should yield,” Phillip said.

“Good advice,” Phineas muttered. He stepped back, very carefully, and saluted the best he could without a blade in his hand. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of his wrist. A rivulet of blood stood out starkly against the skin there.

An instant later, he realized that Phillip’s gaze was fixed on the same spot. “You must have gotten caught up on the pommel,” he said, in a voice that was suddenly, strangely raw. Before Phineas could react, Phillip had reached out and snatched up his hand, pressing his thumb over the scratch.

Phineas’ throat ran dry. “It’s not deep…”

“Such things can invite infection.”

Phillip was looking down at the wound and so it was hard to place his expression with any certainty. But by the way his lips parted and his eyes gleamed, Phineas could almost mistake it for hunger. Unsettled, he extracted his hand. 

Slowly, Phillip raised his eyes. The strange expression had vanished from his face, but all was not back to normal. Phineas could see his hand working down by his side. He had pressed his thumb and forefinger together, rolling them against each other so that the little stain of blood was smeared between them.

“Another bout?” he asked mildly.

Phineas laughed, an unconvincing and nervous sound. “You play too rough for me.”

“Some other time, then.” Phillip’s lips curled into an elegant smile. The rest of his face remained as immobile and unreadable as a block of granite. “I look forward to seeing what you have in store for me.”


	4. Chapter 4

Phineas got his lawyer to rent them a townhouse in the city. Not too good a neighborhood, but not shabby either. The perfect place for a well-heeled newcomer in town to set up shop. Far enough out of the way that it maintained a forbidden aura for the uptown denizens that Phineas hoped to lure in, but not so deep into the tenements and alleys of the Lower East Side that the smart set would lose their nerve.

Give them a thrill and they’d part with their money willingly for the privilege. Scare them too much and they’d clutch their pocketbooks tighter than a matron spotting a working man within twenty paces of her on the street.

Admittedly, Phineas wondered if Phillip understood the delicate balance they were trying to strike here. Whatever character the kid thought he was creating was intense in the extreme, certainly too zealous for family-friendly entertainment. More than once, Phineas had walked in on Phillip pacing the attic room like a caged animal, his eyes burning in his livid face like two naked flames.

There was something different in him now. Something vicious, predatory, ravenous.

Something even Phineas had to admit was possessed of a wild and inescapable magnetism. Half a dozen times now he had made up his mind to sit Phillip down, tell him to get his head right. To clean up his act or they wouldn’t have an act at all. It was just common sense, and good business: you couldn’t put an acrobat with a wrenched ankle back on stage the minute the swelling went down, and you couldn’t let a tightrope walker with vertigo back on the wire the second he got his feet back under him. Doing that was a recipe for disaster.

Phillip, too, was nursing a wound. Sometimes Phineas forgot that. He didn’t like thinking of his protege like that: helpless in mind and body. Whenever Phineas tried to wrap his head around all Phillip had been through, his internal narrative revolted, refusing to see it through to the end.

Maybe this - all of this - was just Phillips way of working through things. One last cleansing fire to purge the darkness within. Hell, it wasn’t exactly the Sunday matinee, but Phineas could see it. He could understand it, even if he didn’t like the way it made him feel. There was a dull ache in his chest when he thought about it for too long, a seizure of pain like a secret thorn lodged in his heart.

Though he had been steadfast in his determination to never speak of the past and even to think of it as infrequently as possible, there was no denying that Phineas had been around. He’d seen things, even death. A decade lost to the railroad, to the whaling trade. To whatever lousy jobs paid top dollar for young and willing bodies primed to be chewed up and spit back out by the grinding gears of Manifest Destiny.

Phineas had been lucky - luckier than almost any of them. He’d only come away with a few scars. In that sense, he was even luckier than Phillip had been.

Let the kid work through things in his own way, that was what Phineas had decided, if only because he didn’t know how to handle the whole terrible and unruly mass of his trauma. Phillip would do his spirit medium act, and it would be cathartic for him. He’d stare into the face of death for a dollar a pop, and once he saw how tawdry it was, how poorly the cotton cobwebs and paper skeletons held up in the harsh light of day, he would back away from it all on his own.

That, at least, was what Phineas was hedging his bets on. Phillip would have to pull through. This late in the game, Phineas honestly had no idea what he’d do without him.

Perhaps he was worried about nothing. In spite of the sudden change, Phillip still had a boyish face and a certain winsome way about him; anyone could see that. Those would certainly take the edge off his newly developed bristles. Though Phillip had become sharp and ominous as an exposed blade, he still looked like he was wrapped up in a silk handkerchief.

There was a chance that no one would notice anything amiss. Except for Phineas, who could notice nothing else.

It was with an icy sliver of dread in his stomach and a stubborn sunny optimism in his breast that he ascended the stairs to the attic room one bright afternoon. Phillip did not spend his entire time up there; he came down for his meals, though Phineas supposed it was for no other reason than to prove that he wasn’t an invalid. It certainly wasn’t because he was hungry; no matter what the cook put in front of him, Phillip dissected it with the same bored disinterest, eating perhaps a bite or two, as an afterthought.

By Phineas’ estimation, it hadn’t slowed him down much. When he entered the attic, Phillip turned at once to face him, his expression alert but unreadable.

He was standing at the mirror, wearing the costume they’d had mocked up. Black, at Phillip’s request. It was composed of a long coat, embroidered and decorated with braid in a fair approximation of the Circassian style, and high Hessian boots. A dagger in an ornate sheath was tucked into his wide belt, though it was only a prop. For Phillip’s safety, Phineas had seen to it that the weapon was blunted beyond any usefulness before he even considered handing it over.

His lids were lined with kohl. Phineas had suggested it on a whim, just to see, but Phillip had really took to the stuff. Rimmed in black, his eyes looked large and expressive. One clear blue, the other marred by a dark spot in the iris. They seemed to say two different things when Phineas entered; they seemed to betray two entirely separate emotions that swirled within.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Phillip said. “I have something to show you. A magic trick.”

Phineas’ heart knocked against the inside of his ribs at those words. He couldn’t say the cause of the anomaly. Nerves, maybe, or something else. Something that with fair reliability caused his pulse to quicken whenever Phillip fixed him with his frank and pale stare.

“Fire away,” Phineas said.

Phillip withdrew to the table where a candle and wooden matches were already laid out, as if he really had set them up in preparation of some sleight of hand magic. He drew the curtains, casting a pall over the room. When he struck a match, the head threw a small sputter of sulfur sparks. He lit the candle on the table, which seemed to cast strange shadows, out of proportion to the smallness of the flame. The light fell back over his fingers, momentarily rendering them as claws.

Slowly, he withdrew his hand. The candle flame stood straight up on the wick, without a single flicker. 

“Well?” Phillips said. “Ask it a question.”

“The candle?”

“No, of course not. The spirit.”

“What spirit?” Phineas asked, uneasy.

Phillip’s lips curved into a mirthless smile. “The one right behind you.”

Phineas had always considered himself a reasonable, rational man. He didn’t believe in ghosts, or even in God save for a few hours every year on Christmas and Easter. All the same, at that moment, he had to fight the urge to whip around and look over his shoulder. 

Against his will, an image began to take shape in his mind: a spectral black figure looming over him, its hunched and crooked body so tall that it nearly scraped the ceiling. Its face was torn by some unspeakable violence, and from the wounds dripped a black liquid, thicker than blood. In place of eyes, it had two lidless black pits in the center of its face.

Phineas could almost see it as the thing lifted one clawed hand to set it companionably upon his shoulder. He felt himself rooted to the spot, his dry mouth suddenly unable to shape words. In the instant before the thing in his mind’s eye made contact, Phillip spoke again.

“I’m only joking,” he said, with an airy laugh. At the sound of his voice, the image of the creature was dashed to bits. The strange waking vision faded and Phineas was once more back in control of his faculties. 

Phillip turned back to the candle. He leaned in close to the steady flame and whispered something over it. Phineas saw his lips move, but he didn’t hear anything of what came out. The candle was still the whole time he spoke, not flickering or stirring with his breath, just pointing straight up as if it had been painted that way.

It was only after Phillip had leaned back once more that the flame began to stir. First leaning to the right on the wick so it was almost perpendicular to the tallow, then snapping back so it was pointed directly at the ceiling. It repeated the process again, bending, in defiance of any breeze or breath, before returning to its previous position. At last, it flickered out of existence entirely.

Phillip watched the plume of gray smoke curl upward from the wick for a moment before turning back to look Phineas in the eye.

“A question unasked,” he said. “But answered all the same. Do you want to know what I see when I read the flames?”

Phineas didn’t say anything right away. When he did, it was only after forcing a laugh. It sounded a little thin, a touch nervous, but still all right to his own ears, which was a relief. “It’s good to see you digging into the part. I think you’ve almost got this sickness licked, kid. What did I tell you about good clean hard work?”

“Whatever task my hand findeth, I will do it with my might,” Phillip replied, quoting Ecclesiastes.

“Glad to see you’ve got things under control. I’ll leave you to it.”

He felt Phillip’s mismatched eyes boring into his back as he turned away. Phineas had his hand on the door and was preparing to leave before Phillip said to him, “Don’t forget to check the post today. Something of great interest will be arriving.”

***

Phineas didn’t give much thought to Phillip’s words, dismissing them as the sort of thing any half-competent purveyor of the mystical arts might say. It was the kind of vague platitude that might have referred to any of a thousand things. Utterly empty but utterly believable as long as the person on the receiving end wanted to believe.

They called that a cold reading. Phineas knew that; he’d been doing his research. Phillip, it seemed, had been doing some research as well. The candle had been a nice trick, even Phineas had to admit that. He’d always enjoyed watching illusionists, but he generally found that if he kept a close enough eye on their hands, if he didn’t let yourself be distracted by a showy gesture or a fancy flourish, he could see the workings behind their tricks. Not so with Phillip, though. The flame had bent and flickered as if it were transmitting a coded message, but try as he might, Phineas had no idea how Phillip had gotten it to do that.

He was so wrapped up in the style of his protege’s demonstration that he almost forgot about the substance of it. Still, when the courier called that afternoon with a bundle of letters collected from the museum and the circus, Phineas sprang up to receive them. 

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find as he thumbed through the usual assortment of solicitations and bills and strongly-worded complaints from concerned citizens, but when a small cream-colored envelope slipped out of the stack, Phineas’ eyes followed it down to the table where it landed. He saw at once that it was addressed to the property on the Lower East Side, the townhouse that was now set and dressed for Phillip’s debut.

Before Phineas could break the seal on the envelope, he heard a soft sound behind him. Turning to look over his shoulder, he was surprised to see Phillip standing in the doorway not two steps away. Somehow, he had come all the way down the stairs, down the hall, to the front parlor, without making so much as a single sound or indication.

He had almost crept up on Phineas without being noticed at all, but when he realized he’d been made, he came forward the final few paces and set a hand on Phineas’ arm.

“Well?” he said. “Read it.”

Figuring that Phillip just needed a little extra support, Phineas thrust out his arm gallantly so Phillip could lean on it. He didn’t rest his weight there, but he did slowly encircle Phineas’ bicep in his hands, holding fast to it as he leaned in so that Phineas could feel the heat coming off his body, even through both their layers of clothing.

Swallowing hard, Phineas opened the envelope. He unfolded the paper inside, which was covered with a delicate flowing script. Aware to the point of distraction of Phillip’s eyes caressing the same lines, the same letters, as his own, Phineas read through the short note.

The Widow Jameston, it seemed, was in desperate need of a seance to contact her husband’s spirit. He had been gone half a year now, and the pain would not abate. There was still so much she needed to say, so many questions she needed answered. She was a God-fearing woman, but God had not provided the answers she sought. Now, she would look elsewhere, so long as the medium would help her.

When he had finished reading, Phineas sighed.

“That’s a hell of a sad story.”

“I suppose tragedies like that must happen often,” Phillip replied. He sounded like he was trying to be comforting, conciliatory. “Why, even now, somewhere in the world, some great misfortune might be befalling hundreds, thousands.”

“All of a sudden, I’m not so sure about this. Are we really just going to go in there and take her money and feed her a bunch of lies?”

“Will she not be comforted regardless of whether the husband who speaks from beyond the grave tells her truth or lies?”

“I guess you’re right.” Phineas looked over at him. Though there was no longer any need to read over his shoulder, Phillip was still pressed up against his side. “We’re going to be helping people, when you really think about it. You’re going to tell them what they need to find closure. It’s going to be really good work.”

“That’s important to you, isn’t it?” Phillip said. “Being a good person?”

“Sure,” Phineas replied. “Isn’t it important to everyone? People are basically decent, and if they’re not it’s just because they haven’t had a hard enough think about the matter. So, yes, I try to be good.”

Phillip shifted, circling around to Phineas’ front. His hand never left his arm, and when he stopped again, face to face with him, his body was pressed up almost flush against Phineas’. He swayed forward, close enough that their lips almost touched. For a second, Phineas thought he was actually going to go through with it, and he found himself confoundingly frozen to the spot in anticipation of a kiss.

But Phillip stopped just short of that. When he spoke, Phineas could feel his breath on his lips, but no more than that.

“Tell me,” he said. “How good are you?”

Phineas paused a moment, catching his breath. His chest suddenly ached as if he’d been deep diving.

“As good as I can be,” he said at last. “Without it getting in the way of business.”

Carefully, he took Phillip by the waist and eased him back a step. It was the only part of him that he could reach, and he was surprised when he caught hold of it and realized that it had become so narrow his hands could almost span it. Phillip really was just skin and bones under the fancy costume.

“If you’re well enough to joke around, you’re well enough for a trial run,” Phineas decided in an instant. “I’m going to make an appointment with the Widow Jameston tomorrow. You’d better start thinking of all those nice and comforting lies you’re going to tell her.”


	5. Chapter 5

The next day, Phineas arrived at the townhouse bright and early. He wanted to be sure that everything was perfect for the Widow Jameston. Though he had not felt right admitting it to Phillip, the woman’s letter had made a profound impression on him. For the first time he was coming to realize that they were no longer dealing with easy marks who might be fleeced out of a little extra pocket change by inviting them to the egress. These were people in pain, hoping against all logic and reason and good sense for answers from beyond the veil.

There was nothing after death, at least nothing which the living could know. Of this, Phineas was sure. Secretly, and without malice, he suspected a weakness of character in those who sought such answers. He had lost things before, even people, and you would never catch him chasing after shadows and phantoms.

Still, weak character or not, the Widow Jameston’s suffering was clearly very real. Phineas did not think he could provide her with the sympathetic support that she needed - that was not counted among his talents - but he could give her the next best thing. With a bit of ingenuity, a little luck, and a fair amount of elbow grease, he could give her a hell of a show.

He spent an hour setting the scene. He was still moving the crystals on the shelf around when Phillip made his entrance. Phineas didn’t hear him arrive; only when his foot creaked on the loose board in the hall did he have any indication that he was no longer alone. He turned in time to see Phillip leaning languid and loose-jointed against the doorframe, watching him with his steady mismatched eyes.

Dressed in a severe black suit, his face pale and waxen, he looked like a slightly wilted Easter lily.

“You find the place okay?” Phineas asked, making a great attempt to sound casual. He didn’t think he quite pulled it off, hadn’t been able to pull it off for quite some time, ever since Phillip had so strangely insinuated himself back into his life.

“With ease,” Phillip replied. He stepped forward, brushing past Phineas as he crossed the room, leaving behind a trail of some strange cologne that seemed to burn out from him in waves. He went to the window and pulled the heavy curtains, plunging the room into darkness. “The sun is harsh today. It hurts my eyes.”

The glance he shot back over his shoulder was conspiratorial, amused. It seemed to say to Phineas that surely he understood; they must share this peculiar affliction. Then he turned and went behind the silk screen that Phineas had brought to decorate the parlor. A brief rustling of cloth came from behind the screen, and then he tossed his topcoat over the frame.

“You can change in the other room, you know,” Phineas said.

“This is fine.” The soft sounds of displaced clothing came from behind the screen. Though the light was very low, it seemed to Phineas that he could still detect the movement of Phillip’s silhouette behind the light silk barrier. His long thin limbs twisted into strange configurations as he shrugged out of his shirt, let down his trousers…

“Anyway,” Phineas called to him jauntily. “Hurry up back there. I want to walk you through some of the effects I have set up. Are you going to do the candle trick?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Phillip said. He stepped out from behind the screen, robed in his black costume. He looked Phineas up and down with hungry eyes. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Phineas didn’t get a chance to formulate an answer. Each soundless step that Phillip took across the floor towards him twisted his words around dashed his sentences apart before they had time to cohere into a logical order. Phillip didn’t move like himself, he had time to think. He didn’t move like anything Phineas had ever seen before.

Phillip stopped before him, so close that their bodies almost touched. His eyes were locked onto Phineas’ face, the spot in his iris looking livid and bright, as if it were illuminated from within by some black light all its own.

“Isn’t there anything?” he said. “Anything at all?”

“Kid,” Phineas said, “I can’t shake the feeling that you’re trying to make me the butt of some joke I don’t quite get.”

“My sense of humor is not so sophisticated,” Phillip replied.

Phineas reached out, fully meaning to ease the younger man away. But when his fingers curled around Phillip’s narrow waist he found suddenly that he could not make them let go.

“Do it,” Phillip said, on the edge of his breath. 

Phineas was rooted to the spot. When he didn’t move right away, Phillip sighed theatrically. “Ah, you’re hopeless.”

Though he supposed it was inevitable, Phineas was still surprised when Phillip leaned forward, pushing up on his toes and arching his back to bring their lips level. He was still more shocked when he could not seem to muster any initiative to stop him when Phillip bridged the last inches between them and pressed a kiss to Phineas’ slack and baffled mouth.

It was not that he had never thought about it. Not with Phillip - certainly not - but with other fellows he had known in passing. Or with some anonymous ideal of masculinity, conveniently bereft of features and familiarity. No, he’d certainly fantasized himself into this situation on more than one occasion in the past, but he had still never thought he would be experiencing it first hand.

He felt a cold bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck. As Phillip’s tongue pressed against his lips, parting them with brisk efficiency so he could explore the inside of his mouth, Phineas had the distinct feeling that the younger man was prying into other parts of him as well. Deep, secret places that he had kept locked away inside.

A surge of dread well up inside him, but there was nowhere for it to go, no way for Phineas to act upon it. It battered itself impotently against the unbreachable barrier of Phillip’s mouth, a bird beating its wings against glass.

Phillip’s lips were cold and smooth, possessed of a refreshing coolness in a room that seemed suddenly too hot, too close. His tongue was bereft of friction and weight as it made a slow circuit of Phineas’ mouth, like a melting chip of ice sliding wetly across a tabletop on a warm summer day.

All at once, the curious weight was withdrawn. Phillip fell back, his hand coming to rest on the edge of the table behind him, gripping it. His eyes were half-closed, head thrown back to expose the white columns of his throat.

“It’s not enough,” he whispered. “I need more.”

Phineas was left grasping at thin air, feeling a coolness like water vapor dissipating on his skin. Phillip was watching him expectantly, not moving at all, simply waiting for Phineas to come closer. Phineas could almost feel Phillip's narrow hips between his hands. The uncanny lightness of his frame as Phineas lifted his feet off the floor and carried him up onto the table. Bore him down onto his back and climbed over him, feeling for all the world as if he were descending into the lair of a dangerous and fantastical beast…

A bell sounded in the hall downstairs. In an instant, the spell was broken. Phillip lifted his head, straightened up and brushed his clothes back into place with a touch of his hand. While Phineas watched him, petrified and dry-mouthed, Phillip straightened his lapels and said, “She’s here. Go show her in, won’t you?”

There was nothing for him to do but obey. Phineas turned and went downstairs on legs that felt so shaky and weak he had to grab the banister on the stairs for support. He could still taste the inside of Phillip’s mouth, which had not really tasted of anything at all but had tingled and effervesced on the tongue like soda water.

In a daze, he opened the front door and showed the Widow Jameston into the parlor. She was somewhat older than he had expected - well into her thirties by the looks of it - more mature in years than the naive hopes and simple sentiments of her letter might suggest. It jarred Phineas all over again to see her standing before him in flesh and blood. A shock of pain went through him anew when he realized that she did not conform precisely to the image he had constructed in his head: a young and tragic new bride. These calamities swept through them all, and they almost never fell along the clean narrative lines of Shakespeare or Dickens. Stubbornly, persistently, in defiance of all he might have wished, the truths of the world refused to be tamed into fiction.

But whatever existential apprehensions he might have been nursing - about the Widow Jameston, or Phillip, or anything else - Phineas could still play his part to the hilt. He showed the Widow in, taking her black shawl, her black hat. She kept the black veil pinned to her hair. Phineas kissed her hand, but his lips could not feel the silk of her glove. His mouth was still numb to everything but the memory of Phillip’s icy kiss.

“The medium is in, is he not?” the Widow Jameston asked.

“He’s upstairs,” Phineas assured her. “In a trance.”

“It’s true, isn’t it? What he can do?” Phineas was aware of her eyes on him, searching his expression. “My sister is very interested in occultism. I never thought much of it, but now I find myself believing that there must be something more. I can’t conceive of a world in which there is not.”

“The story is true,” Phineas assured her. He began to lead her towards the stairs, as much to keep himself from losing his nerve as her. “He walked through fire and out the other side. He came close to death, and then he stepped back from the brink. After that, he was different.”

“He has a gift, then?” the Widow asked. Carefully, prudently, as if she were inquiring to the butcher about the price of a cut of meat.

“He’s got something,” Phineas assured her. “You can bet on it. He’s got something that no one else has.”

Together, they ascended the stairs. Phillip met them at the door, showing the Widow Jameston into his parlor with a gracious sweep of his arm. Phineas hung back, and once he was sure the Widow wasn’t looking, he withdrew quietly. For a moment, he lost track of them, as he slipped into one of the adjoining rooms, then through a connecting door so that he could take up his place unseen behind the curtains that ringed the parlor.

He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do. Though he’d put a great deal of work into rigging wire to move the furniture in the parlor, a concealed bellows to manipulate the candles, even a mannequin draped in rags to cast ghostly shadows on the walls, he hadn’t gotten a chance to go over any of it with Phillip. All his grand plans had been shattered to pieces by the touch of his mouth; all his machinations and schemes sent whirling off into space as the center that once held them was dashed apart.

Phineas could not, for the life of him, imagine why Phillip had done it. All that time they had spent together, surely if the younger man had nursed some sort of crush on him, he would have known. It would have been improper, of course, for a whole host of reasons. Phineas would not have let it go on. But he would have noticed, of that he felt sure.

However, as he watched Phillip move carefully, primly, around the parlor: showing the Widow Jameston to a seat at the round table, moving to secure the doors and light the candelabra, Phineas had to ask himself how much he really knew about his protege. They had never talked about much besides business, finances, and publicity; they had never truly been acquainted outside of work.

Suddenly, Phineas very much wanted Charity with him. Sending her to Europe had been a practical decision, and indeed most of the time he hardly missed her at all, but she at least would have been able to tell him something personal about Phillip. She would have gotten some intimacy out of him, and she would have remembered it, filing the information away until such time as it was needed. That had always been her strength.

She also, Phineas reminded himself, might have had something to say about that kiss. Prior experience had taught him that she had little patience for such nonsense. He would do good to remember that. Let him think on that for a while, and not on how soft Phillip’s lips had been, how he had bent in such an inviting way…

In the parlor, Phillip returned to the table, taking the seat across from the Widow Jameston.

“Shall we begin?” he said, extending both hands with the palms up.

The Widow hesitated before taking them, and Phillip patiently explained, “You need only to complete the circle. I’ll do the rest. Trust me.”

She slipped her hands into his, and though Phillip took them with gentlemanly propriety and delicacy, his thumbs slid briefly along the undersides of her wrists, feeling the pulse points. If the Widow Jameston noticed, she made no indication. Her eyes were fixed on his face, on his gaze which he did not lower as he said, very quietly, “Come forth, spirit of Andrew Jameston.”

Phineas knew that the Widow had not included her husband’s first name in her letter. He tried to think back, to figure out when Phillip had a chance to get the information out of her. Before he could puzzle it out, though, things began to happen very quickly in the parlor.

The candles in the center of the table flickered, and all at once the room turned cold. Phineas could see his breath billowing in clouds before his face, and his fingers began to sting and tingle. The Widow jumped in her seat, trying to pull back, but Phillip tightened his grip on her hands, pushing them down, pinning them to the table in a sudden flurry of violence.

“You must not break the circle,” he said, his tone growing sharp and dangerous.

The Widow’s eyes were no longer fixed on his face, but rather on a spot just beyond his shoulder. Behind him, where a mass of darkness was beginning to gather. The shape coalesced into a writhing ball of shadow, swirling around Phillip’s head like an inverted halo.

“I’ve made a mistake,” the Widow gasped. “This was a terrible mistake.”

“The mistake was mine, darling.” 

The words came from Phillip’s mouth, but the voice was not his. It had lowered an octave and roughened slightly with age. Phineas could not place it, but obviously the Widow Jameston did at once. All the strength seemed to rush out of her. She slumped in her seat and managed to gasp out, “Andy? Is it you?”

“Who else would it be?” the voice hijacking Phillip’s throat said warmly. After the initial shock, it seemed the words flowed quite naturally, but the movements of Phillip’s lips did not seem to match them. It was as if the strange new voice flowed from somewhere within him, and he could only lip sync badly in an attempt to keep up with it, like the dummy of a not particularly gifted ventriloquist. 

The Widow Jameston did not seem to notice the discrepancy, or if she did than she did not care. She had tightened her grip on Phillip’s hands, so hard that her nails cut into his palms. “Darling, there’s so much I still need to say. So much I need to ask you…”

A harsh sound came from Phillip’s mouth, like a burst of static. When he spoke next, his own voice had been restored. “You may ask the spirit three questions,” he said in the measured, silken, conciliatory tones of a medium.

“Yes,” the Widow said with a feverish edge to her voice. “Only three. Whatever you say. Just bring him back.”

Phillip closed his eyes briefly. When he spoke next, that unfamiliar voice had returned. “Ask your first question.”

The Widow blinked back tears, but when she spoke her voice was clear and calm. “What really happened to you out there? I was only told that your ship was lost. If you only knew the horrible things I imaged. Tell me, at least, that you were not in much pain…”

“A rogue wave,” Phillip answered. “It came on us at night, capsized the ship. I was below deck when the water rushed in. I tried to swim, but all was dark. I didn’t make it far. There was a little pain, yes, but I got off lucky.”

He paused, as if thinking things over, and then quickly added, “Of course, there is nothing like that now. No pain, or fear.”

Phineas had expected tears, indeed he had braced himself against a whole onslaught of them. He didn’t want to be here if the Widow Jameston broke down, didn’t want to have to bear witness to the undignified spectacle of a stranger’s grief. 

To his surprise - and relief - she remained steady. Though her eyes were damp, she did not weep or cry out or grow faint. She only looked Phillip steadily in the face as she said, “You’ll forgive me, Andy, if I don’t have the luxury of being frivolous. The company has been slow to make good on your life insurance payments. I stand to lose the house. A man came the other day. He said if I sell the property now, he’ll give me a good price…”

“He says you shouldn't sell.” In an instant, Phillip's voice resurfaced, taking the lead. “Mortgage if you must, but don't sell. Off the coast of the Horn of Africa, he summer currents will reveal the truth, beyond even what they will be able to deny.”

Phineas was more than a little alarmed. Phillip was being awfully cavalier with the details, things that he could not possibly have known or proven. The Widow Jameston seemed to accept this new information without question or doubt. She filed it away without thinking about it overmuch, keeping it in the back of her mind for later examination. At the moment, her only concern was that Phillip was suddenly and undeniably himself again.

“Can’t you bring him back?” she said. “I want to hear his voice.”

Phillip’s lips parted minutely and did not move beyond that. Still, from the darkness behind the white blades of his teeth, the voice of Andrew Jameston poured out.

“I am here, within the circle. You have one question left.”

“I--I can’t think of anything,” the Widow managed. “There was so much I wanted to say, but my mind has gone blank. Perhaps if I had more time…”

“Time is short,” Phillip replied. “Perhaps actions could speak more clearly.”

He stood slowly, not loosening his grip on the Widow’s hands. She moved as if in a trance, as if Phillip’s mismatched eyes had transfixed her.

Phineas tensed up. The kid was way off script, out on the edges of the map where the drawings of monsters dwelled. He had no idea where Phillip was going with this, but the sinking feeling in the pit of Phineas' stomach cautioned him that he ought to intervene. Reaching down at his side, he took hold of the length of wire secured to the door jam. He plucked the chord, and in the other room the table rattled, its legs knocking against the floor.

The Widow gasped, but when she turned to face the seance table her movements were slow and somnambulistic. “What was that?”

“Nothing, my dear,” said Andrew Jameston’s voice. “Just the wind.”

Phillip led her over to the divan and sat with her, their knees inclined towards each other. Their voices were low now and Phineas couldn’t hear what they were saying, though he knew beyond any doubt that Phillip spoke in a voice that was not his own, moved with hands that were worked by strings.

Phineas had the sinking feeling that a course had been charted and set without him. Even if he burst into the other room now and flung the two of them apart, he would not be able to change a thing. He still might have tried, if only because he hated doing nothing, but it was as if he were suddenly nailed to the spot, rooted in place by the small and lurid drama playing out not six feet from him.

On the divan, Phillip leaned closer, and for a moment his expression lost behind the bunch of the Widow’s mourning veil. When he shifted back again, it was not nearly so far away as it had been. Far enough, though, that Phineas could see his face. Phillip’s gaze shifted beyond the Widow’s shoulder, seeking out Phineas’ hiding spot.

For an instant, it seemed to Phineas that their eyes met through the curtain. Phillip shouldn’t have been able to see him, but Phineas knew that, somehow, he could. 

Phillip smiled, as if they were sharing a secret.

Phineas could watch no more. Knowing that it surely marked him as the greatest hypocrite and coward in the city of New York, he turned on his heels and fled downstairs, leaving medium and mark alike to their fates.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Between this chapter and the last one, I've deviated from my original plan a bit. It's fine because I like how it turned out, but I might need some time to readjust my outline. To the few people who are reading, if I don't post for a while don't think I've abandoned the story. How could I after this delicious angst?

Twenty minutes later, Phineas once more heard stirring in the upstairs rooms. There were two sets of footsteps - the Widow Jameston’s light tapping steps and Phillip’s heavier languid treads - which Phineas counted as a good sign.

He’d waited with a thorn of anxiety lodged in his chest, a lump of ice in his throat, for it all to be over. Unable to sit down, even to concentrate long enough to smoke, he’d simply paced back and forth in the front hall, like he was wearing a trench down the middle of it. He felt sure that he had failed utterly, worse than he’d ever thought possible; that he had condemned an innocent woman, or his protege, or both of them, to an unimaginable fate.

It seemed that the steps upstairs passed over his head an absurd number of times, as if Phillip had taken to pacing himself for no other reason than to mock Phineas’ nerves. At last, the Widow Jameston appeared on the landing. Phineas’ breath stopped in his throat, until she began to descend towards him. Then he had no choice but to spring into a flurry of motion, meeting her at the foot of the stairs and offering his arm. 

He expected her to shrink from him, but she did not. Nor did she hurry. Her bearing was proud, almost regal, and the nervous energy that had animated her hands and face as she had gone up to Phillip’s parlor was absent now. She was calm, expressionless.

She set her hand lightly in the crook of Phineas’ arm, pressing it for a moment. 

“Thank you, Mr. Barnum,” she said with quiet gravity.

Phineas started at the sound of her voice -- or perhaps he flinched. The Widow took no notice of it, and he managed to choke out, “You’re all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “I cannot say all is well, but I never expected that. Somehow, though, I feel that I will find a way out of this grief, or that I will at least endure it.”

“I’m relieved to hear you say that,” Phineas said. He fetched the widow’s shawl and hat and helped her into them, willing his hands to not tremble.

“The medium is all you said and more,” the Widow went on. “He has a gift.”

She drew her veil and then turned to face him. “When I first came here,” she said. “I almost turned around and walked out. I could see you didn’t believe those things you told me about him. It was written all over your face. Now, though, you must believe. Believe what I am telling you. He is touched by something, and it can only be benevolent and divine.”

Phineas let his breath out in a sharp sigh that he hadn’t been aware he was holding. By the time he found his voice, the Widow Jameston had already broken free and was heading for the door.

“Wait, I’ll call for a car.”

“Nonsense,” she replied. “I can find one on the street.”

With that, she was gone. Phineas was left staring at the closed door in her absence. Staring, without thought or understanding, until a soft sound brought him back to the present.

He turned, and saw Phillip on the landing. He was dressed once more in the severe black suit he had been wearing when he arrived, looking as neat as a pin without a cufflink or stud out of place. He must have been pleased with himself, Phineas thought, not without venom. He’d gotten what he wanted, coaxed the Widow Jameston with his affections when Phineas had been too slow on the uptake. Well, let him gloat up there in the satiated afterglow; Phineas was damned if he was going to waste anymore time on Phillip Carlyle and his inconsistent, erratic, illogical feelings.

Phineas’ righteous indignation lasted all of thirty seconds. The moment he saw Phillip stumble and grasp the banister tight in both hands, all of his anger vanished.

He fairly sprinted up the stairs. Phillip was pale, reeling; when he looked at Phineas his eyes did not wholly focus on him. He took one step, stumbled. Phineas caught him around the waist without a moment’s hesitation or compunction, supporting him while his legs trembled beneath him.

When Phillip turned his face up, Phineas noticed that both his eyes were blue. The strange black mote that had swum and swirled in the pit of one for days now had vanished.

Phineas barely registered the change. He was too intent upon keeping Phillip from collapsing.

“My friend,” Phillip murmured, his voice weak. “You’re still here… Thank God.”

Phineas propped him up with an arm around the small of his back. “Just take it easy. Can’t have my star keeling over can I?”

The reassurances were weak and unconvincing. Even in his agitated state, Phillip did not buy them for a moment.

“What has become of me?” he murmured. And then he swooned.

Phineas caught him before he could hit the ground, sweeping his limp and insensate form into his arms. He’d wrestled with Phillip’s mass before, on the night of the fire, and it was clear that he’d lost flesh from his bones since then. He seemed to weigh next to nothing as Phineas hurried him downstairs and into the sitting room. 

Leaving Phillip reclined on the sofa, he rushed to fetch water and a little brandy. Phineas felt that he was moving automatically, his legs going through the motions of carrying him about the townhouse, his hands collecting the supplies he needed without conscious instruction. Any thoughts or misgivings about Phillip’s earlier behavior had been violently banished from his mind.

The younger man needed him now. That was enough.

When he returned to Phillip’s side, he saw that his eyes were open once more and he was struggling to sit up.

“Wait,” Phineas said, resting a hand on Phillip’s shoulder and easing him back. “You’re not going anywhere just yet.”

He poured a finger of brandy and offered the glass. Phillip took it and sipped obediently. While he drank, Phineas neatly folded a damp handkerchief and set it on Phillip’s brow, cooling his feverish skin.

“I should call for a doctor.”

“No!” Phillip gasped, a note of panic creeping into his voice. “There’s no need to go to the trouble. I’m all right. That is to say, I’m well. I just lost equilibrium for a moment.”

“Was it your equilibrium giving you trouble upstairs too?” Phineas asked, taking great pains to keep his tone even, his voice gentle. It wasn’t enough. What little color remained in Phillip’s cheeks drained away and he shrank back as if Phineas had slapped him.

“Mrs. Jameston,” Phillip said. “Where has she gone? I have done something I can’t take back, my friend. I’m afraid I pressed myself on her--”

“The merry widow walked out of her with a spring in her step and a smile on her lips,” Phineas assured him. “You didn’t press anything. But I won’t pretend you didn’t get lucky this time.”

“And you?” Phillip asked, hesitantly. He reached out with a trembling hand, almost touched his fingertips to Phineas’ lips, drew them back at the last second. It was still enough to set the flesh of his mouth to tingling all over again. “Did I press myself upon you?”

Phineas felt his eyes narrow, his jaw tighten, all the slack in his animated face tighten up in an instant. “You’ve got a way about you, kid. I won’t deny that. But you can’t make a man do something he doesn’t already want to, at least on some level.”

It cost him something in the coin of embarrassment to get the words out, but Phineas was relieved to see that they seemed to do the trick. Phillip relaxed considerably, his tense shoulders curling over on themselves, head bowing, hands coming to rest in his lap.

“I don’t know what came over me,” he said, chastened. “But surely it was something unnatural. I saw myself acting, felt my body and heard my voice. It was not me, though. I was just the conduit for it, that thing that could not be contradicted or denied. It wanted… you saw what it wanted. I didn’t want it, or maybe I did. Maybe it is as you say, and no man can be made to do something he doesn’t already want. Deep inside, where it is dark and neglected and I dare not look, perhaps that’s where the impulse came from.”

“Phillip.” Phineas said his name sharply, hoping it would snap him out of it. Phillip quieted at once, but he did not look up. He kept his head down, hair falling over his face, so that Phineas could not read the expression there. 

When Phillip did not respond at once, Phineas sighed. Reaching over, he set a hand on the younger man’s shoulder, clasping it. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re going to get you some help. They’ve got these places now, they’re more like resorts than hospitals. None of those problems you hear about. We’ll get you set up with a nice rest--”

“No!”

Phillip had been completely docile up until that moment, and so it was to Phineas’ shock when he jerked away from him. Clawing back into the corner of the sofa, he flung one arm up as if to shield his face.

“No, no!” he said, his voice tight with panic. “Not that.”

In a sudden flurry of movement he sprang to his feet. Though he was still unsteady, he forced himself to walk, as far as the door where he gripped the frame as if it were a lifeline and gasped as he caught his breath.

“I’m fine now, see? I’m well. I don’t need a rest, or anything like that.”

Phineas was utterly baffled. Of all the curious mannerisms Phillip had developed of late, this was the most perplexing by far. Phillip made no move to explain himself. He just stood there, gripping the doorframe and managing by will alone to keep his feet under him. Glaring at Phineas defiantly, as if issuing a challenge.

With a sigh, Phineas got to his feet. He approached slowly, keeping his hands in plain sight as if he were attempting to calm a skittish horse.

“I guess you’re right,” he said, forcing his voice to remain sincere and unpatronizing. “I can see you’re fine. You’ve just about got this thing licked, kid.”

Naked relief registered on Phillip’s face. His knees unhinged and he collapsed; he would have fallen if Phineas had not moved to catch him a second time. It was easier this time, less awkward, to wrap his arms around him to hold him up.

“I think I want to go home,” Phillip murmured, his head coming to rest on Phineas’ shoulder. “Can you find it in your heart to escort me?”

***

An hour later, Phillip walked up the front steps of Phineas’ estate without support. He seemed determined to negotiate the route up the stairs to his bedroom alone, though he clearly could have used the help. His condition, which had once seemed so firmly in remission, had reemerged with a vengeance. He had coughed into his handkerchief the entire trip back to the manor, and a sheen of sweat that heralded fever had appeared at his temples.

Phineas was deeply troubled. For every degree that his protege’s mental health had slipped, he had taken it for granted that at least his physical health was improving. Now, even that was in doubt. Still, the heated reaction Phillip had exhibited when Phineas had hinted at a convalescent home cautioned him against bringing the subject up again.

He wanted to sleep it off, Phillip said. As if the past few hours were nothing more than a persistent hangover or summer cold that might vanish with a little rest. Maybe that would set him right again; it was about all Phineas had left to hang his hopes on, and he did so furiously as he waited in the hallway for Phillip to change into his bedclothes, a task which he insisted on doing himself, without aid.

Though he knew he ought to have left it alone, Phineas had never been particularly good at calling it quits. After a few long minutes had passed with nothing but silence from beyond the bedroom door, he knocked and opened it a crack.

“Phillip? I’m coming in.”

Without waiting for a response, Phineas steeled himself as if for battle and stepped inside. 

Phillip was seated on the edge of the bed, his eyes trained on the wedge of light that slanted in through the open window and painted itself on the floor. He did not seem to have heard Phineas call. He wore comfortable flannel bedclothes, but he had not finished buttoning the up; the shirt was open over is chest, to the sternum, revealing a laticework of mysterious bruises over his ribs.

“What’s this?” Phineas said, affecting a cheer he did not feel. “You can’t get lazy on me now.”

He stepped forward briskly and did up Phillip’s buttons with the efficiency of a medical orderly. With one hand on his shoulder, he prodded Phillip into the bed, pulling the covers up.

Phillip turned away, onto his side, facing the wall. Phineas’ shoulders slumped. He hadn’t asked for this, and he wasn’t sure how long he was going to be able or willing to chase after Phillip when he seemed so determined to retreat deeper into himself, disappearing into whatever darkness had taken root there.

He rallied himself and mounted one last assault. His hand alighted momentarily on Phillip’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “Get some rest, kid. It’ll all be better in the morning.”

As he began to withdraw, a sharp and abrupt pressure on his wrist stopped him. Phillip had half-turned onto his back and caught hold of him before he could get away. His fingers were icy cold, but not bereft of strength.

“Please,” he said. “Don’t go.”

Phineas’ stomach turned over, and he felt an ominous tightening low in his body, a dangerous stirring along lines that had been indelibly carved into his bones when Phillip had kissed him earlier. Cautious but unhesitating, he moved to sit on the bed at Phillip’s back, his hand once more coming to rest on his shoulder.

“This all right?”

“I won’t ask more,” Phillip said, disappointed.

Sighing, Phineas stretched out next to him, turning onto his side so that he was pressed up against Phillip’s back. His arm went around his waist, holding him lightly. Phillip tensed minutely, and then abruptly relaxed. His hand came to rest over Phineas’, pinning it to his chest.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “I know you can’t see it. I know you don’t believe me. But somehow, when you’re here, it’s not as bad.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Phineas said. “You can count on that. But I could do more if you’d tell me what’s really wrong.”

Phillip was quiet for a long time. Eventually, Phineas stopped waiting for an answer. If Phillip didn’t want to talk to him, that was his choice, but he might have at least thanked him. Phineas was going to a lot of trouble for him, taking a big risk without much hope of reward.

“Listen,” Phineas plowed on, though he was no longer sure Phillip was even listening. “I’m not cross about earlier. You were in a state. It’s all water under the bridge, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Earlier…” Phillip echoed vaguely. “Earlier, I behaved hysterically. I wish you hadn’t had to see that.”

This time, it was Phineas’ turn at silence. Phillip was talking about that little performance he’d put on after Phineas had mentioned the convalescent home to him. That had been plenty curious - he could see that in hindsight - but not what he’d been talking about.

For Phineas it all came back to that kiss. That impossible, unspeakable intimacy that Phillip had thrust upon him. It had been only a single mistake out of perhaps a thousand that they had made on this unfortunate afternoon, but it was the one Phineas could not forget. It seemed, though, that Phillip was not ready to talk about it. Maybe that was for the best. There was nothing either of them could do about it now, save push the memory out of sight and never speak of it again.

“I was a cad,” Phineas said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. You were right to be angry.”

“Angry?” Phillip echoed, incredulous. “I wasn’t angry. In that moment, when you said those words, I was terrified.”

“Oh.” Phineas knew it was insufficient, and so he rushed to explain himself. “Like I said, those places aren’t as bad as their reputation makes them out to be. I mean, some of them are, but not all of them. I have it on very good authority--”

“And I tell you, I have seen for myself!”

Phineas caught his breath. Here Phillip was, at last unburdening himself of his secrets, and Phineas had no idea what to say to him, how he could possibly react.

“Phillip…” he started. His voice sounded all right to his own ears, free of shock or disgust or condemnation, but at the sound of his name Phillip’s body went rigid and he jerked away.

“Spare me,” he hissed, sliding over to the far side of the bed. He grabbed the blankets as he retreated and sat up, clutching them around himself. “Spare me your pity and your ignorant platitudes. It was something that happened to me when I was younger. So long ago that I’ve almost forgotten, save for when some inconsiderate bore reminds me.”

Without thinking, Phineas followed his retreat. “Wait,” he said, hand coming to rest on Phillip’s back.

Phillip jerked his head, turning violently away. He took a breath, preparing to respond, but then he began to cough. He clamped both hands over his mouth, stifling the sound, but his body shook with the choking fit. His shoulders jerked, back arching so far that Phineas could feel the vertebrae through his skin.

Again, Phineas found himself moving without planning to. He was no longer operating on reason or even emotion, but on some base instinct that kept drawing him closer to Phillip, like an insect beguiled by a flame. He wrapped his arms around the younger man from behind, pulling Phillip close, holding him while his body was shaken by tremors.

In time, the coughing subsided, but Phillip stayed bent over, a hand pressed to his lips. There were tears on his cheeks; Phineas could see them beyond the curtain of lank hair falling over his face. He let his hand fall, closing it into a fist, though not quickly enough that Phineas did not catch a glimpse of the red smear on his palm. Blood had pooled in the hollow of his hand, trickling over his wrist.

“Let me die,” he whispered. “It is for the best.”

“Don’t say that,” Phineas replied, surprising himself with his vehemence. “You’re talking nonsense.”

He closed his hands around Phillip’s arms, urging him to lie back so that he was propped against the pillows. “You rest. I’ll get the doc.”

Phineas made as if to stand up, but Phillip stopped him with a touch of his hand. “No, please. I’ll be good. I won’t say anything stupid like that again.” 

Without relinquishing his hold on Phineas' arm, Phillip passed his hand over his cheeks, wiping away his tears. “See? I know how to act. I won’t shame you.”

“That wasn’t what I was worried about,” Phineas said. His lips tightened. “How could you ever think I’d be ashamed of you?”

Phillip glanced away. “I’m doing everything all wrong again.”

“Kid…” Phineas sighed, at a loss. Gently, he took Phillip’s icy hand between both of his. “Tell me what this is all about. What happened to you?”

His gaze remained averted, but Phillip was no longer trying to escape. He was retreating, yes, but not from Phineas; he was falling back through the years, into that past he insisted he had forgotten. 

“They told me I had a melancholy temperament,” he said at last. “Those doctors who came when I was a boy. Their words reached me as if through a layer of gauze. I heard them, but I didn’t understand. How could I know, really, what was abnormal within me? I had never known anything else.”

Phineas was quiet. He realized that Phillip was entrusting him with a secret he had never spoken of before, not even to Anne. Though he was the one that had asked, Phineas honestly had no idea what he would do with it once the truth was out.

It was too late to go back now. Phillip went on, speaking of the black moods that had descended on him beginning in childhood, growing deeper, more violent, more oppressive as he aged into adolescence. The periods of melancholy came and went, but a shadow hung over even moments of peace and contentment. Even at his best, he knew it was only a matter of time before darkness came again.

He was always exhausted, but too restless to sleep. What food and drink he forced himself to take turned to ash in his mouth. There were the headaches, too, blinding in their intensity and sudden in their onset, driving him into his darkened bedroom where he would lie with his face pressed into the pillow to muffle his moans.

All of that, though, paled in comparison to the paralyzing fits of grief. He learned early on that they could not be fought, or reasoned away, or overcome by will. All he could do was fall back and let the black wave wash over him, tainting him with its darkness. 

At first, he that was afraid the misery would kill him, crushing him beneath its terrible bulk. In time, though, a new fear emerged: that he would not die at all. That he would be left alive to suffer, to make all those close to him suffer. 

They tried, of course, for his sake. His family scheduled trips to Europe, weekends in the country, a thousand pleasant diversions, none of which came close to penetrating his despair. Phillip knew what was happening. All around him, people were bending over backwards to make him happy, but he was too spoiled and too weak of character to appreciate what he had. 

He was beneath contempt. An utterly worthless creature somehow let loose to walk the earth amongst those who were actually deserving of life. 

It had been a mistake. That was the only explanation: a terrible cosmic error that Phillip, by the time he was thirteen years old, had become determined to set right. He made the attempt one afternoon when the nurse had the day off and he knew his parents were both downstairs. With a pocketknife pilfered from his father’s study, Phillip slashed both his wrists with no more care or concern than the cutting of a stray thread off a coat.

There was a great deal of blood, but he felt no pain at all. That seemed to him further evidence that he was doing the right thing in removing himself from a world that had never wanted him, in which he had never belonged.

He lay down in bed, on top of the covers, and almost at once the world around him faded to black. Phillip met it eagerly, squeezing his eyes shut tight like a child trying to sleep on Christmas Eve.

It seemed that only a few seconds past before he opened his eyes again, but in that time a crowd had gathered around him. He saw their faces floating like spirits above him, heard their muffled voices, felt his skin tingle in the wake of their touch.

He knew at once, without needing to be told, that he would live. Even in this, he had failed. A knife, he thought. How stupid to use a knife. He knew where his father kept a dueling pistol, where the gardener kept the arsenic for rats, even where the water in the river out back of the house flowed swift and deep. It was too late now; he had failed even in ridding the world of the intractable burden of his existence.

When the wounds on his wrists had healed, his parents arranged for a stay at a resort hospital. It was a clean, well-appointed place. Very humane, very civil. People even got better there, from time to time, and were able to return home. Of course, if Phillip did not learn to control his destructive impulses, he was welcome to stay so long as his family's money held out.

On the day that he left home, he didn’t weep. He was numb beyond tears, beyond even fear, as a representative of the hospital packed him into a carriage. One hand slipped beneath the sleeve covering the opposite wrist, tracing the scar there.

Weeks passed - months perhaps - the darkness had come again and Phillip no longer kept track of time. He knew that he cried a lot in those days, sometimes bursting into violent sobs while strolling in the garden, taking his meals, or simply standing in one of the hospital corridors. The tears seemed to come from nowhere and return to the same. They did not cleanse the soul or heal the emotions, and there seemed to be an endless reservoir of them within him.

His melancholy interested one of the doctors on staff, who said that he had seen such symptoms before, but rarely so intense and never in someone so young. There was a treatment, he said. Very new, experimental even, but he had high hopes.

In the basement of the hospital, he had installed a device of his own design: a wooden chair with straps that passed over the wrists and the ankles and around the body. There was a rag to force into the patient’s mouth, to keep him from biting his tongue, and a crown of electrodes that encircled the head. There was a strange machine nearby that hissed and whined with electricity from a hand generator.

Something happened then, which Phillip could not recall. He knew that he went several times to that room in the basement, but he could not remember what transpired there. Each time he received the doctor’s experimental therapy, it was as if a piece of his memory were erased, a piece of himself excised.

In time, the darkness that had gripped him subsided. His mood stabilized, and the crying jags ceased. Everyone was shocked, save for Phillip himself. The darkness was part of him and he of it, and so whatever the doctor did in that basement to dismantle his very sense of self would in time take apart his pain as well.

Six months after his admittance, Phillip was ready to go home. He was a changed man: no longer melancholy, but now serious and quiet. Almost bereft of feeling, though after so long with nothing but an excess of emotion, everyone was glad to see him stable and predictable.

They asked him what had happened, what the miracle treatment had been. Phillip didn’t have an answer for them. His memory of those days never fully returned. All he knew was that he had been cured in the basement of the hospital, and that he was horrified of ever having to go back there.

When Phillip finished the story, he kept his face turned away a moment more. Phineas could see that his chest was rising and falling quickly; he had winded himself from talking so much.

Eventually, he shifted so he was looking into Phineas’ eyes. 

“So now you know what I really am,” he said quietly. “A lunatic. A pathetic depressive. I’ve been nothing but trouble for everyone who has ever cared for me. I’ve brought nothing but shame on everything I’ve ever been associated with.”

“Kid…” Phineas said. “It’s not your fault. None of it.”

He hesitated, then reached out to touch Phillip’s cheek. He was still under the brush of exploratory fingers, but his lips twitched slightly, as if it form a grim smile.

“When the darkness comes again, I’ll know what to do. I couldn’t manage it last time, but I am older now, and wiser. I know that I knife is not enough.”

“I don’t like this topic of conversation,” Phineas said.

All at once, Phillip reached up and caught hold of Phineas’ hand, pinning it to his cheek with feverish intensity. “Promise me you won’t make me go back to that place. Anything but that, even the darkness again. Swear that to me.”

“I can’t,” Phineas replied. “Not if offing yourself is the only alternative. I’m sorry, kid.”

Phillip glanced away again, releasing Phineas’ hand as abruptly as he had grabbed it. He was slipping away, as surely as a man being pulled out to sea. In an instant, Phineas had made the decision to plunge into the waves after him.

He turned Phillip back to face him, leaning in to press their foreheads together. He squeezed his eyes shut, unwilling to look at the intoxicating blur of Phillip’s features so close.

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” he said. “Not while I’m on the job. You’re safe with me, Phillip. Do you think you can believe that?”

Close, still, so close that he felt a rustle of air on his cheek when Phillip sucked in a breath. “I believe you, Phineas.”

“Then I’ll protect you, from the darkness or whatever else gets thrown at us. I promise you that.”

It was a vow he had no idea how he was going to keep.


	7. Chapter 7

Phineas hadn’t intended to linger long. He’d meant only to stay with Phillip until he was resting and then slip off to apply his steady and competent hand to the situation until everything was taken care of.

He didn’t have a plan, or anything approaching one, but he knew that something had to be done and Phineas had never been the sort of person who could sit idle. Phillip needed him, and that was enough to spur him into action. He’d summon a doctor - a discreet one - though he supposed he knew what any bonesaw worth his salt would tell them to do. It would be the one thing Phineas had sworn he wouldn’t let happen.

In a moment of less than grand judgement, he considered turning to Phillip’s parents. A couple of dusty mummies walled up in gold tombs by all accounts, but Phillip was their oldest son. Maybe they would care.

Surely if he went to them humbly, hat in hand, and explained the gravity of the situation, they would handle this for him. For the moment, they might forget that he was the Pied Piper of the gutter, seducing the children of the well-heeled away with glitter and glamours. That had never been his intention, but he didn’t expect the Carlyles to understand it any better than Charity’s parents had. Phineas was confident that he had never made anyone do anything, but people would always look for an outsider, an interloper, to blame.

All of them had made their own choices. There had only ever been a few open to him, but for Phillip there had been innumerable. He had wanted this life, though. Even now - especially now - Phineas had to believe that.

Resolved now to do what had to be done, Phineas decided that there was no harm in resting his eyes for a moment. He felt exhausted, wrung out, weary in a way that was all but unfamiliar. Phillip was still restless, coughing occasionally. Phineas leaned back against the headboard at his side, folding his hands in his lap.

In less than a minute he was fast asleep.

When he woke next, he didn’t know what time it was save that it was dark outside. Moonlight came in through the attic window, which had been carelessly left open.

Phineas wasn’t sure when he had sunk down on the bed, but he was lying on his side now. The fingers of one hand prickled with pins and needles. A weight pressed down on his arm on that side, putting everything below the elbow to sleep. When Phineas tried to extract the limb to safety, he found the trap that ensnared it to be warm, soft.

Phillip was fast asleep, draped over his arm, though it seemed he was not the only one whose body had betrayed him. Phineas was pressed up against the younger man’s back, so close that they could share a pillow. His free arm was looped around Phillip’s waist, holding him.

Phineas sighed. He supposed it was just one more embarrassment on top of many today. Moving slowly, carefully, so as not to disturb Phillip’s slumber, Phineas ran fingertips down his arm, briefly pressing his hand.

The flesh there was warm to the touch despite the cold evening air drafting in. He could let him rest a moment more, Phineas decided, but before he could relax back against the pillows, Phillip began to stir.

Phineas jerked his hand back as if he had been caught at some dirty business. It was ridiculous, of course; whatever their relationship had become, it was far too late now to pretend that they were still on the right side of propriety.

Phillip shifted in his sleep, but did not wake. A soft moan escaped his lips, and his brow furrowed.

A nightmare, then, Phineas surmised. He’d heard the superstitions about not waking a man in the midst of a bad dream, and like all good stories he half-believed them. Gently, he set a hand on Phillip’s shoulder, hoping to soothe him.

“No…” Phillip gasped. His fingers curled in the bed sheets and a shudder ran through his body. “Please, no more wires. Not again…”

Phineas frowned, giving Phillip’s shoulder a shake. “Kid. It’s okay.”

Phillip came awake with a gasp, sitting bolt upright in bed, his hands flying to his throat, tearing open the collar of his bedshirt as if it suffocated him.

Then he blinked, coming to his senses. His hand went from his neck to his temple, pushing his hair back into place in a reflexive movement. “Oh. Pardon me.”

“No problem,” Phineas replied. Slowly, cautiously, he moved closer, taking Phillip’s hand between his. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Phillip said. “I think so. It was only a dream. It’s all in the past, I assure you.”

“That’s fine. But not exactly what I was talking about.”

“Then you’ll forgive me if I’m not sure what you mean. It might be any number of things.”

He was right about that much. No shortage of excitement for either of them lately. “Let’s start with that cough,” Phineas said. “It didn’t sound too good.”

Phillip paused, frowned slightly, as if he were considering the matter. He pressed one hand against his breast, where his breathing sometimes pained him. “I feel better.”

“Great news.”

“You’re good medicine.”

Phineas’ stomach turned over, and he felt a knot of heat gather low in his abdomen. When Phillip raised his eyes, Phineas tried to look away but he wasn’t fast enough. He was pierced through and pinned in place by his gaze.

“You can help me,” Phillip said. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Phineas rasped, his throat suddenly dry.

“Then save me. Like you saved me on the night of the fire.”

He leaned in and Phineas moved to meet him, catching Phillip’s face between his hands and kissing him. What few misgivings Phineas was still able to muster were washed away the instant their lips met. 

It was not like the last time. In the townhouse, Phillip had been seductive, coy, cloying… Hot as hell in spite of all that, but you didn’t have to be the undisputed master of artifice and pageantry to know that it had been an act. This, though, could only have been the real deal. Phineas recognized Phillip at once, in the stubborn set of his jaw as he leaned into Phineas’ lips. In the way that he kept his eyes open the whole time, calmly taking the measure of the situation.

They kissed until Phillip was out of breath. He broke away, panting for air, and gasped out, “God help me...”

God help them both, Phineas thought. He certainly wasn’t in any state to help himself.

His hands were already clenched in the front of Phillip’s clothing. All Phineas had to do was lean into them; the slightest pressure was enough to topple Phillip onto his back. Phineas followed him down, keeping himself raised on his elbows, mindful of resting his weight on Phillip’s heaving chest. 

Phillip’s head was thrown back, lips angled out of reach, and so Phineas set to work exploring what he could reach with his mouth. He kissed along the underside of Phillip’s jaw, down the smooth column of his throat, until the collar of his bedclothes arrested his progress. Phineas reached for the top button of Phillip’s clothing, but his hand trembled and his fingers refused to obey.

A soft murmur escape Phillip’s lips. It was little more than a whisper, but it made Phineas’ heart beat harder. It set his skin to tingling as if it had been charged with electricity. He was still shivering when Phillip angled his thighs apart, creating a hollow where Phineas’ body could settle.

Almost before he was aware it was happening, they were fitted together. Hip to hip, Phineas could feel the ridge of Phillip’s cock through his clothing, hard and soft at once.

“I want this,” Phillip breathed. His hands went around Phineas’ shoulders and he pulled him down with sudden savagery. “It’s indecent, how I want you.”

To Phineas, who had all but lost his reason the moment Phillip pulled him close, that declaration appeared as a welcome beacon, a statement of purpose. He knew now what he had to do. Sliding one hand under the tail of Phillip’s shirt, he worked it up until he reached the smooth skin of his abdomen.

Phillip gasped at the tactile contact, and as he did the schoolboy’s polish on his voice faded. When he spoke next, the words had a sharp and mocking edge to them.

“This body wants you.”

His blood ran cold, and Phineas jerked away, tearing himself free of Phillip’s hands, his mouth, the snare created by his thighs. Though it had come from Phillip’s lips, his throat, that had not been his voice. Phineas was sure of that, even if he could make no sense of anything else.

“What’s wrong?” Phillip said, raising himself on his hands to follow Phineas’ retreat. In the low light, his teeth appeared bright and sharp when he smiled a mirthless smile and said, “Cold feet?”

He sat up in bed, allowing the moonlight to fall full on his face. Though it cast strange shadows over his cheeks and his lips, it made his eyes appear large and bright. One clear and blue, but the other only half its twin: bisected down the middle, one half light and the other fathomless black.

The mote had returned to cloud his iris, but it was larger now, more prominent. Dark and livid, but somehow animated, as if it were a window onto an intelligence all its own.

It flashed with dark fire when Phillip laughed and said in that unfamiliar voice, “You never want to have any fun, Phineas.”

“This is fun for you?” Phineas echoed, incredulous.

Phillip’s eyes swept leisurely down Phineas’ body, settling on the juncture where his thighs came together. His gaze was pointed, intense, exerting an almost physical pressure that made Phineas’ cock twitch.

“I could certainly have some fun with _that_ ,” Phillip purred, lingering over the words.

Phineas couldn’t bear it, this impostor with Phillip’s face, this crude simulacrum of his friend. He bolted to his feet, drawing his loosened clothing around himself. “You needn’t be so vulgar.”

“I’ve had just about enough of your middle-class Puritanism,” Phillip said. He swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, angling them invitingly apart. “This body will give you what you desire. Things that you didn’t even know you were missing.”

“I’m a married man,” Phineas said. He had meant his voice to sound firm and resolute, but what came out was a desperate gasp, a last-ditch effort. “For all our sakes, I’ll pretend this never happened.”

Phillip’s expression did not change. He just sat there, impassively watching, as if Phineas were nothing more than an energetic child having a tantrum. The shameless, inviting intensity in his eyes did not waver, instantly robbing Phineas of whatever moral high ground he had been inexpertly attempting to claim. When he was through, Phillip only patted the mattress at his side and said mildly, “Come back to bed. I don’t want to pretend.”

It was too much; Phineas could bear no more. He turned violently away and made for the door.

There was a soft sound behind him, barely a whisper. It did not occur to Phineas that Phillip had moved at all until he was face-to-face with him once more. Phillip had flanked him effortlessly and placed himself in front of the door, blocking it. He moved with a ruthless ease and efficiency that let Phineas know at once that his illness was once again in remission. 

“Where do you think you are going?” he whispered.

Phineas froze in his tracks, and when Phillip came forward a step he retreated to match him. There was no doubt that he was a facing a fierce predator.

“I’m going to get you help,” Phineas said. “Whether you want it or not.”

“All the help I need is right here.”

He reached out. Phineas drew back, though not fast enough. Phillip’s fingertips skated along his jaw, around to his lips. “We need to perform another seance.”

“Not a chance,” Phineas replied instantly, but the way Phillip’s mismatched eyes narrowed when he spoke the words immediately curdled whatever courage had motivated him to speak them. He swallowed hard and forced himself to continue, “I’m not letting you do that to anyone else.”

“Then I have no use for you,” Phillip said. “And without you, no use for this body.”

“So go. Leave the kid alone.”

It was beyond absurd, talking to Phillip as if he were not who he was. As if the malevolent intent that throbbed inside him could somehow be separated from the man. Even Phillip himself would not have agreed with that. He, who had spoken with such desperate candor of the darkness within, beaten back and held at bay by terror and torture.

Perhaps this thing that conversed using Phillip’s voice and looked out at the world through Phillip’s eyes was that same darkness returned to claim him. Or perhaps it was something else, something that had followed Phillip back from his brush with death and that clung to him now as a parasite clings to its host.

There was a third option too, and this was the one Phineas least wanted to contemplate. He could allow for the improbable, the fantastic, the supernatural, but he could not entertain the idea that this was simply who Phillip was now. Damaged in mind and body, he had become this shadowy doppelganger, this creature of cruel and base impulse.

No, it was impossible. Better a malediction, an unknowable evil, a terrible despair. Better any of those things than that his blithe-mannered, serious-minded, self-possessed, obscenely beautiful Phillip could also be this twisted and wicked creature before him.

“You want me to leave?” Phillip said, drawing out the words as if savoring them. “Out into the night? The cold?”

Phineas’ stomach turned over. “No. No, not that.”

“If you don’t want to help me, Phineas, then I can go. If it’s all too much for you to take, then I can walk away. Into the snow, softly falling, covering this body’s tracks.”

“You know that’s not what I mean!”

“I could make it far enough that you wouldn’t find the body right away. Perhaps in the spring, the thaw would turn it up. A pitiful pile of bones, picked clean by the scavengers. Or maybe you would never find anything, Phineas. Maybe you would never look.”

“Stop it!” Phineas shouted. He raked his fingers back through his hair, pushing the heels of his hands into his temples to quiet the clamoring there. “I’ll do it. Whatever you want.”

“That’s a wise choice,” Phillip said. “Because you know the rest, don’t you? You already know how this story ends. How tears freeze on the face, how the cold sinks into the bones. The way that freezing to death is not half so peaceful as the stories say. And you know that as this body takes its last breath, it will think of you and how you abandoned it.”

“I’ll find you someone else who needs a medium. Just don’t hurt anybody, all right?”

Phillip flashed him a polished smile. “Did the Widow Jameston look hurt to you?”

Feeling his cheeks grow hot, Phineas lowered his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to think about what had happened in that parlor after the formal seance was concluded. What, it seemed, would have to happen again if he was going to get Phillip out of this.

“Just give me time,” he said, cowed and somber. “I’ll make sure everything works out, I swear it.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm back! I'm going to try to get back into doing updates a couple of times a week since I know how much it sucks to wait around for new chapters. Fingers crossed.

That night, Phineas slept in the guesthouse out back of the property. He couldn’t believe he was being chased out of his own home by that thing that stalked the attic room, but here he was. 

No doubt Phillip already knew of his less than dignified retreat. As he crossed the chilly and damp back garden, Phineas chanced a glance over his shoulder at the house. All was silent and dark and still, save for the attic window. There, a light burned steadily. From this angle, it seemed too bright and unflickering to be a candle; it was almost like one of the electric lamps Phineas had seen once or twice before.

Though no shadow came to cross the curtains and no hint of movement was to be detected within, Phineas had the unmistakable feeling that Phillip was watching him from up there. That, despite the distance and darkness, he could see everything.

Unsettled, Phineas hurried on, not stopping until he had shut the guesthouse door behind him and secured the latch. It was not until he was safe in the private darkness within that the whole horror of the situation washed over him. He sagged against the door, reaching back blindly to press his hands against the wood. It felt like the only thing keeping him on his feet.

Something beyond all comprehension was happening; something about which Phineas could say nothing with any certainty save that it was horrible to watch. That it was afflicting _his_ Phillip was almost too much to endure.

Phineas could no longer remember when he had begun to refer to Phillip in the possessive. Certainly by the time he had followed him into the fire he was already thinking of Phillip as belonging to him: an extension of himself, an investment to be preserved.

To Phineas, it seemed only natural that should be the case. He’d been the one who had arrested Phillip’s slide into boring and utterly predictable dipsomania. He’d given him a purpose, writ for him the bold narrative lines by which he could begin to craft an original story for himself. 

Besides, Phillip had been handsome, rich, elegant. A beautiful mystery moving through the drab and conventional halls of high society. He was the very best of them, and did not Phineas Barnum deserve to have the very best of everything as his own?

The notion gave him clarity of mind, like a beacon appearing in the midst of his swirling thoughts. Phillip was his because he had fought for him, sacrificed for him, had the balls to make a play for him. Because he had wanted him and so he had worked to get him, just as he had his family, and his fortune, and his house, and even Jenny Lind who he felt confident he still held in trust. All these things that he had scrabbled tooth and claw to wrest away from the jealous grip of a universe that stubbornly refused to recognize his many exceptional qualities.

He’d proven them all wrong. Everyone who had ever doubted him, in the end he’d gotten the last word. He could do it again, he was sure of that. It didn’t matter that this time he was up against something he’d never imagined before. That sinister creature, that malediction, sneering at him from behind the perfect mask of Phillip’s face… It didn’t matter. He was no stranger to being laughed at. 

Morbidly, the thought calmed him. It made him feel a little better to know that, whatever malicious intelligence may have hitched itself to Phillip’s consciousness, it was just another snob that had underestimated them both. Phineas reminded himself of that as he forced his hands to release the solid surface of the door and made himself straighten up once more. 

There was still the faint but urgent sensation of being watched, the undeniable feeling of eyes on the backs of his hands, the nape of his neck, everywhere skin was exposed. Phineas ignored it. He headed back to the bedroom in the rear of the guesthouse. 

The space was made up for visitors who never arrived. One of the maids came out here a couple of times a week to change the sheets and dust. As far as Phineas knew, no one had ever slept here, until now.

Phineas stepped out of his shoes, shed his tie and his waistcoat. He hadn’t thought to bring bedclothes from the house, but he hadn’t gotten so soft over the past decade or so that he’d forgotten how to sleep in his clothes. Phineas put out the lights, taking the last candle with him to bed. He hesitated before extinguishing it, all at once aware of how dark the bedroom would really be without it.

He’d never been afraid of the dark before. With a defiant jerk of his chin, Phineas blew out the candle and lay back. He wasn’t about to cringe and cower at the thought of what Phillip had become. Nor was he going to lose sleep fretting and imagining the worst. He was going to face it, head on.

He made himself close his eyes.

Phineas had always been able to get by on very little rest. He was a light sleeper, prone to snapping awake at the slightest sound. Alert in an instant and ready to spring into deliberate and purposeful action. Tonight, though, he did not drift off reluctantly, his mind lingering long in a half-dreaming state. Practically the instant his head hit the pillow, Phineas was dead asleep.

Outside, a mist formed on the grass. Light, almost transparent, at first but rapidly darkening into a heavy gray fog. Though there was no wind, the mist eddied and swirled, gradually coalescing on the stoop of the guesthouse. With a dramatic flourish, it moved as one body, flattening low to the boards and sweeping through the gap beneath the door.

It moved with a purpose now, coiling down the hall and creeping around the door to the bedroom where Phineas reposed in blissful and oblivious sleep. The fog drifted gently to the foot of his bed. It shaped itself into a tall, elegant spire, taking the form of a man.

The form yielded to flesh and blood, and then it was Phillip standing beside Phineas’ bed, looking down on him with a bemused and indulgent expression. His hair was disheveled, and there was condensation on his skin.

Moving soundlessly, as if in a vacuum or on another plane of existence, he stepped forward and kneeled up on the bed. Phineas shifted as Phillip’s weight settled over him, straddling his hips. His brow furrowed, and he seemed on the verge of waking.

“Shh,” Phillip purred, resting the tips of two chilled fingers on Phineas’ lips.

Phineas’ eyes snapped open. His expression was calm when it first settled on Phillip’s face, secure in the fact that his protege would not really hurt him, but when he realized he could not move his eyes widened in panic.

“Just rest, my darling,” Phillip said. “I’ll take care of everything.”

He bent, arching his back. The touch of his lips on the exposed curve of Phineas’ throat made his hair stand on end. Phillip’s hands roamed over his shoulders, his chest, exploring the hard contours of muscle. 

“You love to act refined, but your physicality betrays you,” Phillip said. “You still have the arms of a laborer.”

A twitch of the brow was the only response Phineas could manage. Phillip saw it, and he breathed a quiet laugh. “Don’t be like that. I meant it well. You’re irresistible to this body.”

He pressed a kiss to Phineas’ pliant and unresponsive mouth. His lips were chill to the touch as he slipped his tongue into Phineas’ mouth and made an exploratory sweep of it. The edge of his breath carried a faint, earthy taste. Not unpleasant, but strange. It was like a wisp of black dust carried by a private tempest that swirled inside him without being of him, an alien presence that pervaded all it touched.

Phineas would have recoiled from it, but he was frozen in place: his eyes wide open, limbs pinned down by an invisible weight. His mind alone was alert, racing; wide awake in a body that was still paralyzed by sleep.

Whether unaware or simply uncaring, Phillip continued to explore his mouth, pulling back only slowly, reluctantly. Catching Phineas’ lower lip between his teeth as he withdrew, leaving a sting of exquisite pain in his wake.

“I know somewhere you have never traveled,” Phillip said as he began to move down Phineas’ body, still bent low so that his lips grazed the hollow of his throat, his breastbone, his diaphragm. “Chastity-tight all through those long and lonely years in the wilderness, virgin on your wedding night. So afraid that the slightest slip might bring crashing down all that you had worked to build. Phineas, I know something you have never tried.”

Phineas’ throat hitched. He wanted to protest, if only to spare his pride, but the words wouldn’t come. Phillip’ fingers - thin and icy cold were already hard at work at the front of his trousers, undoing the hidden buttons without trembling or faltering. Then they slipped inside and eased his stiffening cock free of the folds of fabric.

A few strokes of his hand coaxed it fully hard. Phillip cupped the underside in his palm, feeling the pulse that throbbed there. Phineas was trapped, able only to watch. An unpleasant pressure built behind his eyes and to his mortification he felt tears prickling there. He blinked them away furiously, but one broke free from the corner of his eye.

Phillip spotted it at once.

“So, that’s it.” He reached up with one cold hand and brushed the offending moisture away. “All right, you win. I won’t tease.”

That was all the warning he gave, before he dipped his head and slid his mouth over Phineas’ cock.

The first touch of his lips was an electric shock. Phineas felt it in every limb, in his head where it blotted out all else, even his sense of self. It was as if a velvety cocoon had closed around him, and he could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, save for the clench of Phillip’s throat around his shaft as he took him in obscenely deep.

Phineas had closed his eyes, and so he could only imagine what Phillip must look like, bent over his hips, hands planted on either side of his thighs. His back arched like some supple and deadly beast crouched over its prey. His head down so that his hair obscured his features, or else tilted back at an impossible angle so that his mismatched eyes were fixed on Phineas’ face, missing nothing in his expression.

Even though his heart was pounding frantically, the paralysis that gripped him did not lift. He could not reach down and grab Phillip by the hair, neither to thrust him away nor to pull him closer. He could feel a knot of heat building in the pit of his stomach, radiating out into every limb. His veins glowed blue beneath the skin where it coursed through him. He was close now; there was nothing left but to surrender…

Phineas awoke with a strangled gasp, thrashing at the blankets tangled around his limbs.

His hands flew to the apex of his thighs, finding not the unruly tangle of Phillip’s hair but instead only the painful bulge of an erection tenting the front of his pants. He hissed through his teeth, jerking his hands away.

A dream, he told himself. And then told himself the same again, repeating the word until he almost believed it.

He sat up slowly, reeling and disoriented from awakening in a strange room. His cock shifted inside his trousers, brushing painfully against the fabric. It was one of those stubborn, sleep-numb hardons, unresponsive to stimuli but unwilling to go down, even as the phantasmal adventure that had caused it began to fade from his mind.

Phineas got out of bed and walked back and forth across the room a few times. There was no purpose to the pacing, but he felt that he could not sit still. Though the humiliating dream had begun to fade, images kept flashing unbidden through his mind. He could recall Phillip’s too-bright eyes, his coaxing voice. Each time he did, it threatened to rob him of his reason entirely.

***

The next morning, Phineas awoke to light streaming through the guesthouse windows. He could not remember lying down, though it seemed to him more likely he had simply collapsed in a fit of nervous exhaustion sometime well after midnight. Still fully dressed, he was stretched out on top of the sheet, shivering in the early morning chill.

As he sat up and straightened himself out, there was an instant in which he remembered with perfect clarity the way Phillip had looked bent between his thighs. Phineas’ jaw tightened, and he shook his head to drive away the vision. He was no stranger to vivid dreams, but never like this. Rarely did the things that visited him at night carry over with such stubborn clarity into the harsh light of day.

Though it was not a thought he particularly wanted to entertain, Phineas was forced to wonder if it really had been a dream at all.

No, he told himself firmly. No point going down that road. Start with that nonsense and he’d lose his reason entirely. He knew that there was something wrong in his house, and he was ready to accept that it might not be entirely natural, but he wasn’t about to believe every bit of fantastical foolishness that popped into his head.

Phineas screwed up his courage and headed for the house. It had seemed intolerable the night before, but in the harsh light of day it was a little better. He needed to at least go see if he might begin to put things right. That creature that may or may not have been Phillip wasn’t going to let him get away with shirking for long.

When he came in from the garden, he could hear the soft murmur of voices from the back of the house. He slowed his steps, something warning him to move cautiously. As he crept around the corner and into the dining room, he found himself facing Phillip’s turned back. He was in the doorway to the kitchen, bent with a sweeping elegance over one of the young house cooks. From the way he stood, it looked as if he had moved to block her escape, though she was not trying to get away from him now. Her face was tilted up to his, her eyes glazed, as he reached out to stroke her hair, speaking low under his breath.

Phineas scowled and cleared his throat. The cook started where she stood, giving a quick glance at her surroundings as if unsure of how she had come to be there. Then she ducked under Phillip’s arm and made a break for the living room. As she passed Phineas, she shot him a smile that may have been apologetic, or grateful.

Phillip was slow to turn once she was gone, but when he did it was with an elegant smile on his lips.

“What a pleasant surprise, my friend.”

Phineas eyed him cautiously. Phillip seemed much tamed from last night, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up. The truth was plain in his eyes: one was still split by burning blackness.

“Good to see you up and about, kid,” Phineas said, without venturing closer. “I guess you’re feeling better.”

“I’m back to my old self,” Phillip assured him.

“What were you talking to the girl about?”

“Mary, you mean? I was simply telling her about certain rare delicacies I have tried in my travels. I wanted to know if she would take the recipe.”

He smiled a toothy smile, and continued before Phineas could respond. “I understand if you didn’t like my gift last night, but the polite thing would be to say thank you all the same.”

Phineas felt his shoulders tensing up. It was all he could do to keep from glancing away, escaping Phillip’s bright gaze. “I don’t know what gift you’re talking about. Maybe you need to check the recipient.”

Phillip laughed abruptly. It was a sound of genuine amusement, and it made Phineas jump; he had almost never heard it before.

“You are a curious one,” Phillip said. “But no matter, you do your work well. A little crow whispered to me this morning, you will be receiving another inquiry about our side business. Do be quick to follow up. I’m getting restless.”

“Sure,” Phineas replied, tasting bitter bile in his throat. “You just remember what you promised.”

“I remember, Phineas. Don’t worry about this body. I will keep it well in trust.”


	9. Chapter 9

Good to Phillip’s word, when Phineas’ mail arrived later that morning there was another card addressed to the townhouse fit in among it. Phineas considered tossing the note out then and there, or letting it slip, as if by accident, between the table and the wall and out of sight. 

He dismissed the idea at once. Phillip surely would find out.

The first thing he noticed was that the writing on the envelope was stiffer, more upright, less distinctive than the Widow Jameston’s had been. It gave Phineas the faint hope that it might be a solicitor or accountant, writing to inform him that regrettably the house was being repossessed, the business shut down. 

Of course, all professional failures pained him on a deep and personal level, but Phineas could not say he would have been all that broken up to see this particular infant strangled in the cradle. It was with a distinct sense of hope for reprieve, that Phineas cracked the seal on the envelope.

The letterhead on the enclosed note was for a small shipping company that he had never heard of. Beneath that, the stiff-backed salutation addressed him as “To whom it may concern.”

Phineas read on. The letter was from the desk of Martin Stavros, until recently a co-owner of the business and now sole proprietor. He had heard from his sister, who had in turn gotten the news from a reliable source in her social circle, that there was a way to find things that had been lost. His business partner, Heaven rest his soul, had recently passed away and left the office records in disarray. The funeral was over and soon there would be an audit. Perhaps the medium could ease the transition, keep the family of the deceased from being involved needlessly. Perhaps this could all be taken care of quietly, without trouble, if the medium saw fit to help.

There was something curious about the letter, but Phineas couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He set the paper aside, resting his hand over it as if the truth could be transmitted through the skin.

He hadn’t expected to hear from a fellow, though he supposed there was no law against a man believing in occult nonsense. Just as the Widow Jameston had been older and more steady-nerved than he had anticipated, he supposed a solid middle class businessman could also harbor certain secret hopes.

At the very least, a man strolling into the upstairs parlor might throw a wrench into Phillip’s gears. He’d have a harder time coaxing a fellow over to the sofa than he had the Widow Jameston. It might even get him to display a little shame.

When he heard the sound of footsteps behind him, he was unsurprised. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but even that sensation was becoming familiar, even welcome.

Phillip slipped up beside him and placed his hand over Phineas’ where it lay covering the letter. “What is it?”

“Don’t you already know?” Phineas replied, forcing himself to keep still, to not turn his head to look Phillip in the face.

“Mr. Stavros, the mousy clerk,” Phillip purred. “He’s lost something dear to him. Stavros means cross, you know.”

“I don’t suppose crosses have any effect on you?”

“How gauche,” Phillip said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

His cold fingers tightened on Phineas’, branding their shape onto his skin. “Make sure everything is ready for him. I can’t do any of this without you, Phineas. Keep being a good boy and I’ll have a treat for you very soon now.”

***

The early train into the city the next morning brought Phineas back to the townhouse. It was still some hours until the appointment with Mr. Stavros, but Phineas had thought a little peace and quiet might be preferable to creeping around his own home like a trespasser. In fact, the townhouse was scarcely less oppressive; Phineas had not thought to so much as pick up the papers on his way, and there was nothing to distract him from the emptiness of the place.

He could hear the sounds of the city passing by on the pavement outside, but he did not feel a part of them. If he went outside now he had the irrational but utterly overwhelming impression that he would be stepping onto an empty street, populated by, at best, a few shades that he might walk among unnoticed.

Phineas paced the townhouse, an unquiet living soul among ghosts. He wished that he still drank so that he might have something to do with his hands. God knew that he deserved one after what he’d been through the past few weeks, but he resisted the temptation. He needed a clear head, and besides to sit down with a drink now would be to admit that he may have actually been out of his depth.

Things didn’t look great from where Phineas stood, but they had looked bleaker before. He’d clawed himself back to the top more times than he could remember, and he would do it again, dragging Phillip with him kicking and screaming the entire way.

He had not forgotten the Northwest Passage. Sometimes weeks would go by when he didn’t think about it at all, and then, abruptly, something would remind him. The way the sun reflected off the pavement, or a sudden draft that whispered over the back of his neck. It had been a long time since his mind had been thrown back there - since he had been forced to relive the crossing in every nerve and fiber - but he still remembered it well.

It wouldn’t happen like that again.

The sound of the front door startled Phineas out of his thoughts. It was a welcome distraction to be sure; he didn’t need to be thinking about this right now. It was all in the past, and what was past ought to have the decency to stay there.

Phillip came in from the foyer, passing through the sitting room on the way upstairs. He barely glanced in Phineas’ direction, no doubt registering the expression on his face before moving on, uncaring.

Phineas almost let him go. He had a lot on his plate, and the last thing he wanted to deal was Phillip’s all-encompassing need for something that Phineas could not even identify precisely. Phillip was almost to the stairs before Phineas realized that he really was going to leave without a word.

“Kid…” he started to say, but then trailed off. He didn’t know how to go on.

It was enough, though. Phillip hesitated at the sound of his voice, then turned slowly. When his gaze landed full on Phineas’ face, all the arrogant swagger seemed to drain out of him. Mutely, he reached out. Phineas felt himself compelled forward, until he could close Phillip’s extended hand between both of his.

“I’m sorry, Phineas.”

“Don’t be like that,” Phineas told him. 

Phillip’s lips made the shape of a small, bloodless smile. He caught hold of one of the hands enfolding his own and lifted it to his mouth. Phineas’ pulse leapt as Phillip pressed his lips to his wrist.

“It will all be over soon,” he murmured.

Though that was precisely what worried him, Phineas did not protest. He took Phillip’s chin in his hand, tilting it back so he could look him in the face. Phillip held his eyes steadily for a long moment, then he glanced away demurely.

“Things could have been different, Phineas. Couldn’t they?”

“I don’t rightly know,” Phineas admitted. “But maybe they don’t need to be. Maybe everything just has to go back to the way it was. Normal.”

“Yes,” Phillip said. “We’ll be normal again.”

He glanced again at Phineas’ face. Though the bisected left eye was flat and unreadable, some deep emotion glittered in the pit of the right. It was panic, or something equally urgent. With a quick jerk of his head, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of Phineas’ mouth. Then he was pulling away again, disappearing towards the upstairs parlor. Phineas didn’t follow him.

***

Like a good businessman, Mr. Stavros was punctual. When Phineas opened the door to show him in, the first thing he noticed was the man’s suit. It was a rather dandyish cut and a sober black color. There was a length of black crepe twisted around his hat, and a white lily tucked into his pocket, drooping its waxen petals over his heart.

Phineas found himself scrutinizing Mr. Stavros’ face closely, though he could not say exactly what he was looking for. His expression was carefully unreadable, as if he had coaxed every feature into neutral affect and was taking great pains to balance them there, reminding Phineas of the game of toppling dominoes he used to play with the children.

When Stavros caught Phineas looking, his eyes darted away. The nervous affect was about the only clue he gave as to what he felt about being here. By Phineas’ estimation, he was a solid soul. Not one to fall for Phillip’s seductions. Besides, he was only here on a matter of business. It would keep his head clear.

“My sister urged me to come,” he said as Phineas brought him into the sitting room. “She said the medium did wonderful things for a friend of hers. Right up until I was walking down this very street, I wasn’t sure if I was going to go through with it.”

“I suppose the kid knew you were coming,” Phineas said. “Even before you knew yourself.”

“You don’t have to give me the hard sell,” Stavros said. “Either he knows where my missing papers are or he doesn’t. It is a simple matter to prove and it shouldn’t take more than a moment.”

“Maybe I ought to ask you to pay up front,” Phineas muttered.

Stavros laughed gamely, though, Phineas noted, made no move to reach for his wallet. He took the man upstairs, into the darkened parlor. Phillip was already waiting at the table in the center of the room, his eyes fixed patiently on the door, waiting for them. When some of the glow from the hall washed over his face, Phillip blinked and flinched away, as if he had been out of the light for a long time.

“Come in,” he said in a quiet, velvety tone. “Let’s begin.”

Phineas was aware that Stavros had paused at his side, hesitant on the verge of stepping forward as if Phineas had led him to the edge of a cliff. His eyes were fixed on Phillip’s face, and Phillip turned slightly, giving him his angles, consenting to be admired.

“You can leave us, my friend,” he said. Phineas backed out of the room as if guided by an invisible force. In the hall, he debated a long moment before going into the adjoining room so he could watch.

When he made it to the curtained alcove, Mr. Stavros was still lingering by the door. Phillip lifted one hand from the table and said, “Come closer. Tell me about what you have lost.”

Stavros stepped forward with the slow-motion cadence of a sleepwalker. He slipped his hand into Phillip’s, who guided him to sit and then took his other hand, completing the circle.

“Some papers,” Stavros said shortly. It was all the explanation he had given in his letter or otherwise. “They were in my business partner’s possession. I need them back.”

Phillip’s smooth brow furrowed momentarily in concentration. “Thadeus Harrington, the muscle and the vigor behind your grand idea. Blond hair, blue eyes. You saw him first at Yale, preparing for the regatta. In his shirt sleeves and shivering, for it was an unseasonably cold day.”

“What are you doing?” Stavros tried to pull his hands back, but Phillip held them fast, with an unnatural strength. “How do you know this?”

The candles around the parlor fluttered, blazing momentarily shades of blue and green. Something swift and black and without form darted in front of the alcove where Phineas was hidden, rustling the curtain in front of it. Where it passed, it left a cold trail of gooseflesh on his arms.

That dark form descended over Phillip like a shroud, disappearing where it touched his skin. When he spoke next, his voice was different, strange, ill-suited to his mouth.

“Because I am here,” he said. “As if I never left.”

“You’re not him,” Stavros said flatly, seemingly unfazed by the new voice. “He’s dead.”

“I am what you made me,” Phillip said. “A chain forged to cruelly bind you. You’re here about the letter; we both know that. Perhaps you still hold out some mad and desperate hope that I didn’t read it. But if you are honest with yourself, as you so infrequently are, you know that I did.”

Stavros was quiet for a long moment. Phillip’s eyes were fixed unblinking on his face, a small smile playing about his lips as if he were enjoying some pleasant diversion. “You may ask the spirit three question,” he said in a tone that Phineas found infuriating.

“Fine,” Stavros said through a clenched jaw. “Where did you put the damned letter? That’s my question, if you please.”

“I burned it,” said Thadeus Harrington’s voice in Phillip’s mouth. “So you may rest easy, knowing the shame will not fall on you.”

“You perfect idiot,” Stavros said quietly. He was glaring at Phillip now, as if he hated him. “It was never myself I was worried about. It was you, always you.”

He shook his head violently, as if trying to drive away a stubbornly intrusive thought. “I have my answer, though. I’ll take my leave.”

With this, he tried to stand, but Phillip tightened his grip and jerked him back into his seat with such force that it rattled the candles on the table.

“Do not break the circle!” he said in a terrible voice. 

A tremor shook the room, making the floorboards vibrate under Phineas’ feet. This was nothing like it had been last time. Something was horribly wrong, and Phineas could not imagine how he had let it go on this long. With a sudden stroke of mental clarity, he realized he did not even know how he had gotten here.

He tried to move, to burst through the curtain and fling the two men apart, but he was rooted to the spot. It was with a growing sense of panic that Phineas realized he could not move at all. When he opened his mouth, no sound came out. 

A deep chill crept over him, penetrating his clothing and numbing him from head to toe in an instant. It was as if a dozen icy hands had come out of the ether and begun to paw at him. He could see them now, blue and skeletal, arrested in the act of rubbing against each other, clutching the opposite arm in a desperate attempt to preserve some body heat. Here and there, a finger already black with frostbite, creeping up the digit as slow and inexorable as death.

No, no, that was all in the past. He had left the ice behind him, fixed his gaze straight ahead and kept moving and in the end he had outpaced it. It was in the past, and he refused to believe it had caught up to him now.

He could move enough to bite his lip, which he did vindictively, as if to punish himself. The blood that bubbled into his mouth was hot and bitter, shocking him back to the present. He could still feel those skeletal hands clutching at him, but they were slipping away now, back into the darkness and forgetting, where they belonged.

In the parlor, he could hear Phillip say, “I understand. It takes courage to ask. I will answer all the same. Listen, he read the letter. In the end, he knew your awkward and untimely confession. On the eve of his wedding, you hopeless little thing. When you had already had years.”

“That wasn’t what I was going to ask,” Stavros said. His voice kept growing thinner and tighter, as if he had to work to push it out past his set jaw.

“Then you want to know if he killed himself because of you,” Phillip said. “You want him to put your conscience at ease, or at least give you a reason to follow him. Is that your third question for the spirit, Mr. Stavros?”

Phillip paused for a long moment, letting the tension build in advance of his words. A born showman, that one, Phineas had to admit.

“No,” he said at last. “It was a riding accident, just as the inquest said.”

Before Stavros could answer, Phillip’s voice once more became not his own. It was Thadeus Harrington speaking through him, saying, “Perhaps I would have come to you, if there had been a little more time.”

Stavros had kept his eyes stubbornly downcast, but at that he lifted them slightly. “There’s time now.”

“So there is."

Phillip rose from the table, one hand still fast on Stavros’ wrist to keep the summoning circle intact.

Though he was seized with the urgent need to look away, to deny that this was happening again, just like before, Phineas did not avert his eyes. When it had been the Widow Jameston bending to Phillip's hypnotic wiles, it had been easy to turn away.

Philip traced his fingertips up Stavros’ arm. The circle apparently remained unbroken enough, Phineas noted, and his lips twisted into a humorless smile at the thought. Who would have guessed even the rules of the dead had loopholes?

If Stavros appreciated this joke as well, his face didn’t show it. His expression at last had softened into a look of such plaintive yearning and open sorrow that Phineas felt his own heart ache in response, but Philip continued to regard the man before him with the level and calculating gaze of a livestock appraiser with an eye for horseflesh.

With an excess of efficiency and very little genuine passion, Phillip lowered himself to the divan, drawing Stavros after him. He disappeared coyly behind the back of the furniture as he reclined, allowing Phineas only a glimpse of one pale hand as it lifted to wrap around Stavros’ lapel and guided him down.

Phineas’ throat burned, and he realized he had been holding his breath. He let it out in a sigh that was so loud he was sure they had heard it in the adjacent room. 

The curve of Stavros’ back came into view as he lifted himself onto hands and knees. It was bent at an ugly angle, like some hideous predator hunkered over its kill. Phineas could imagine his clumsy, pawing hands. The way they fumbled over his Phillip, defiling him, humiliating them all. 

He had half a mind to fling them apart himself, to chase the interloper out onto the street with a swift kick or two for good measure. But he knew that he would not.

Already Phineas knew that he was helpless to do anything but watch as Phillip’s arms wrapped around the narrow crossbar of Stavros’ shoulder. To do nothing but listen as their wordless voices tangled into an impossible knot so that he could not tell one from the other.

A shadow still hung over them, unknown and unnoticed but anyone but Phineas, who could see nothing else.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol, so much for posting new chapters once a week. Sorry about that. I'm in the homestretch now, though, so thank you to everyone who stuck with this fic as long as they did. I know it's been a wild ride and maybe not exactly what you sign of for when you get into this pairing, but I really appreciate all the kind words about my weird little project.
> 
> Five chapters left, knock on wood.

In a few minutes, it was all over. The black shroud that had fallen over the parlor lifted and the candles blazed up again. All through the whole lurid display, Phineas’ sight had grown dimmer and dimmer; now, he saw everything in perfect clarity.

Stavros had lifted himself from the divan and was doing up the buttons on his clothing. Phillip, however, had made no move to rise, and Phineas could identify very little of him, only a fragment of his fingertips where he had thrown his arm over the back of the couch, the tip of one foot that had fallen from the seat and trailed along the floor.

Fumbling on his coat, Stavros at first seemed unwilling to look in Phillip’s direction. He kept his gaze carefully averted, at last sucking in a deep breath to steel himself before risking a glance back towards him. Abruptly, his expression softened, as if he had caught a glimpse of Thadeus Harrington lingering in after-image upon his features.

He bent sweepingly and kissed Phillip’s mouth. “You’re not at all what they said you were. But I’m grateful.”

Phillip didn’t respond right away, and with an embarrassed lowering of his head, Stavros turned and fled the room. Phineas heard him go down the stairs, his footsteps rapidly receding, then he head the muffled echo of the front door closing behind him.

For almost a full minute, it was silent as death in the parlor. At last, a soft sound reached Phineas’ ears. 

He tensed up, wondering what fresh hell was in store for him now. A wave of shame followed almost at once, when he realized that the noise that had startled him so was weeping.

In an instant his fears were forgotten. He brushed the curtain over the alcove aside and stepped into the parlor, coming around to Phillip’s side. His clothing was in disarray, though pulled into some semblance of modesty. He had turned his face away, covering it with his hands to stifle his sobs.

“Chin up,” Phineas said gently. He sat on the edge of the divan at Phillip’s side and laid a hand on his hair, stroking it.

At first, Phillip tensed, his breath catching in his throat in a pained gasp. Then he relaxed once more, turning onto his back so he could look Phineas in the face. In his red-rimmed eyes and pinched expression, Phineas could see little of the coldly seductive spirit medium he had been but a moment ago.

Sighing, Phineas helped him sit up, guiding Phillip into his arms where he sagged like a dead weight, his head resting on Phineas’ shoulder.

“He’s gone,” he said at last.

“Mr. Stavros?” Phineas replied. “I know. I heard him go out. No need to worry about him.”

“No. The _other_ one,” Phillip said. 

He leaned back enough to look Phineas in the face, and Phineas saw the truth at once, written in the clear blue of Phillip’s eyes.

“Got what he wanted and took off without a word,” Phineas said. “Well, good riddance to him.”

Phillip’s brow furrowed. “It is like a beast that has gorged itself and then retreated back into its lair to digest. It will return.”

“But I’ve got you back,” Phineas replied. “Even if it’s just for a while. That’s good, right?”

Phillip paused before answering. He was calm now, collected. With a steady hand he reached to wipe his cheeks dry. Phineas fumbled with the handkerchief in his pocket, and then offered it with a gallant flourish.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Phillip said, dabbing at his eyes. “When it has me in its grip, it takes control of my hands and my tongue. Sometimes I think that it must master my eyes as well, so I can no longer see you as you are.”

He reached to touch Phineas’ jaw, but Phineas caught his hand before they could touch and forced it down. It would only distract him, and he had enough on his mind already.

“Listen,” he said. “I don’t know how much time we’re going to get. But we have to do something, Phillip. This can’t go on.”

“It’s not that simple.” Phillip looked down. “Maybe it isn’t so bad. Mr. Stavros wasn’t hurt, was he? I think I really am helping people.”

“I couldn’t give a damn about Stavros, or anyone else. You’re the one who’s in trouble here.”

“Then maybe I deserve it. We all make our own fortunes, do we not?”

“Oh, no,” Phineas told him firmly. “A lot of self-pitying nonsense isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“Nonsense?” Phillip echoed. He shook his head. “Don’t think I don’t know what I am, Phineas. A drunk and a dilettante. Spoiled and coddled. An utterly superfluous ornament upon the world. This thing that is in me, it is here because I let it in. Because I was too weak to resist it.”

“You don’t know that,” Phineas said instantly. “Phillip, this isn’t you. The darkness, the melancholy, whatever you want to call it. This is it talking through you.”

“You think I’m mad.”

“I think you’re unwell,” Phineas replied. “I think you need help.”

Phillip’s head snapped up, and his expression contorted into a look of such betrayal and horror, that Phineas almost drew back from it.

“You wouldn’t,” Phillip said. “Phineas, I’m begging you--”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. Phineas saw the first wave of pain come over him, as if it cast a tangible shadow. Phillip doubled over, pressing his hands to his temples as a moan of agony escaped him.

Phineas started forward instantly, catching Phillip’s shoulders in his hands. His muscles were hard, trembling, compacted into knots.

“Breathe, kid.” 

His hands moved up, over Phillip’s collarbones, to the juncture where his neck and shoulders met. Phillip was still shaking, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He was laughing, Phineas realized all at once, his body vibrating all over with morbid amusement. Disgusted, Phineas started to draw back, but his hands had scarcely left Phillip’s shoulders when the younger man’s head snapped up.

Phillip let out a slow breath, which formed an opaque white cloud in the air in front of him.

“No rest for the wicked,” he purred. “There’s someone who is simply dying to speak with you.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Phineas ground out.

Phillip smiled without humor. Then he opened his mouth and the voice that came out spoke from out of the distant and forgotten past.

“You left me, Phin,” said that familiar voice. “Out there on the ice. Breathing and bleeding, as alive as you were.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” said Phineas sternly. “Get over it. It’s been years.”

“Trauma does not forget. Though you might plaster over it with your distractions and your amusements, though you might strive to make enough meaningless racket to drown it out, your worst moment will always be the first and best thing that defines you. It is the nature of humanity, to cling fast to the horror and allow the good to drift away on a cloud of nostalgia.”

“For lesser men, maybe. But not for me, or the kid for that matter. We’re made of sterner stuff, and we keep moving forward.”

“I like when you fight, Phin,” said that familiar voice, the one he had tried so long to forget. “I like watching you. Now, will you ask the spirit three questions?”

“Not a chance,” Phineas said, forcing the words out through his constricting throat. He tried to pull away, but Phillip’s hand had closed around his wrist. A delicate touch indeed, but about as easy as an iron manacle to break. 

Amused, Phillip said with mock concern, “Heavens, you mustn’t break the circle. Who knows what dreadful things might happen.”

His left eye, the one that was clear now but usually marred by the black mote, had begun to water. The tears were curiously opaque and viscous, and Phineas watched in fascination as they flowed together into a single mass on Phillip’s cheek. Phillip reached with his free hand flicked the moisture away.

It did not fall, but rather drifted as if in a single mass of gossamer fabric. 

Ectoplasm, Phineas thought. He had read about the phenomenon, dismissed it as hokum, and now was seeing it with his own eyes. For a moment, all else was forgotten in the wake of rush of giddy delight as the spectral form grew before his eyes.

All at once, it caught, like a scrap of cloth blown by a stiff wind would catch on a wire. It wrapped around, fitting itself to the contours of the invisible obstacle.

Late, too late, Phineas realized what was being revealed to him. Hanging there in the darkness just beyond Phillip’s shoulder, was a grinning death’s head.

The blood rushed to Phineas’ heart, making his vision waver and darken just as his mind struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. Eyeless, malformed, with a row of jagged teeth like a broken zipper stretching from ear to ear.

Phineas reeled back. Though Phillip maintained his hold on his wrist, this time Phineas recoiled with enough force to pull the younger man after him. He tried to get to his feet, but his legs were not prepared to hold him. He collapsed back onto the divan, landing in a heap with Phillip on top of him.

For the first time since the sheen of ectoplasm had manifested, he looked up into Phillip’s face. His expression was utterly calm, unaffected by the tempest all around them. It froze Phineas to the spot, his pulse beating in his ears and his heart throbbing in his chest like a fist beating against a wall.

Phillip smiled placidly, his lips parting just enough to reveal a flash of blinding white teeth and the droplets of black ooze leaking between them.

He opened his mouth, and a torrent of ectoplasm unfurled from his throat. Body-warm and sticky, it hit Phineas square in the face. He had not even time to register a cry of disgust before it dragged him down into waiting darkness.

***

At first, it was the endless creaking of the wooden hull that tormented him the most. Sometimes it seemed to groan - even scream - under the constant pressure. But, as the days wore on, as his ears adjusted to the steady racket, he became aware of another noise layered under the first: this a low and steady throb, a rumble almost subsonic to human hearing. It was softer sometimes, but unlike the clamoring in the ship’s hull, it never went away entirely. Though it might become less urgent, or more, it never really went away.

It was the sound of the ice, expanding and shifting in protean forms beneath the water’s surface.

On the fourth day, Captain Lamb ordered them to abandon ship. In a matter of hours, they had stripped the Charon to its timbers. In the gray leaden light of the Arctic afternoon, they moved everything out onto the ice, rigging sails into tents and breaking up the long boats for firewood.

Phin scurried among the men, helping where he could but mostly concerning himself with the appearance of being useful and present. He had a vague notion of how bad things could get, and how little need or patience the rest of the crew might have for a twelve-year-old ship’s boy if that were to happen.He was not afraid - not yet - but he knew that he must keep his head.

Once they had set up camp on the ice, some of the men felt that they might breathe a sigh of relief. This turned out to be premature. Though they were free now from the stifling and stinking confines of the ship, the groaning of the ice had not abated. It was joined now by a cold and bitter wind that howled constantly across the ice fields, bringing with it constant clouds of dry, crystalline snow that blinded them and stung like nettles any bare flesh it happened to lash itself across.

The ship could not be saved, that much was clear. Locked in the ice, it was a certainty now that it would be crushed and swamped long before the spring thaw came to free it.

There were supplies enough, Captain Lamb assured them, though some belt tightening and rationing would be in order. He would see to it, that tough old campaigner, veteran of the Royal Navy. He would make sure that they didn’t get themselves in any more trouble.

Those first few days on the ice were a breath of fresh air. After all those stifling and backbreaking weeks at sea, here was a brand new adventure. Phin had not quite gotten his sealegs yet, and, despite the precariousness of the situation, he was relieved to be back on solid ground. After all, Captain Lamb had assured them that the worst that might happen was that they might go hungry for a time. Phin was no stranger to that.

It was his first voyage out, and though he listened ardently to the men when they grumbled that something like this ought not have happened, when they spoke ominously of the lost Franklin expedition, he did not really believe the whole misadventure would result in anything more than a head cold and a grand story to tell back home. 

He was new to the business back then - new to life on his own - and he had not thought to ask why such a grand and distinguished English gentleman as Captain Lamb would be manning a run-down American whaler. It had not occurred to him to wonder why the ship had such a hard time finding crew - so much trouble, in fact, that it had set out nearly a full month after the rest of the fleet - nor why the captain had taken on such a young and untested ship’s boy, one obviously not of age, bereft of experience, without so much as a single reference to commend him.

No, it was not until years later, when he had joined a proper merchant vessel and done sufficient time in more tropical climes for even the memory of the Arctic cold to soak out of his bones, that Phin realized the truth had been plain for him to see. It was scarcely concealed behind the screen of colorful sails that crowned the Charon, behind the glamor of Captain Lamb’s impeccable uniform and imposing beard and seemingly endless stash of fine Irish whiskey. Like the supports holding up a backdrop for the stage, the truth was the hidden bones of the illusion.

After a week, the vast emptiness began to weigh on even the most stout-hearted of them. It was as if the endless white wasteland all around them had begun to seep inside. Daniel Crow, the Ojibwe cook, told them in a frank and matter-of-fact way about the wendigo, the spirit which preyed upon human greed and made monstrous cannibals of men. Once you felt the hunger of death upon you, he said, it was already too late.

Without even meaning to, Phin found himself scanning the horizon, squinting into the haze of snow, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of those huge and ravenous beasts. That would be the thing that would make it all worth it.

Daniel Crow said that to see the spirit marked you for death, but to not see it was worse by far. That meant that the wendigo had laid eyes upon you first.

Winter came without mercy, bearing down on them from the direction of the sea. The temperature dropped steadily and the wind blew constantly, throwing that cold sharp snow into their faces, down their collars. Its howling was incessant, though never loud enough to drown out the low groan of the ice. Nothing ever dried; nothing ever warmed. A pallet of supplies went through the ice; a second was raided by one of the great white bears that stalked the ice. Rations were cut further still, and even Phin, who was no stranger to going to bed hungry, never thought of anything but the next half-frozen and unsatisfying meal.

Fifteen days after they abandoned the Charon, the first man died. 

They found him frozen in his tent. His arms were crossed over his chest and his eyes were open, indicating that he had not gone in his sleep. Cataracts of frost bloomed here and there on his skin. When the young sailmaker tried, with a guilty sheepish look on his face, to take the corpse’s gloves, one of its frozen fingers snapped clean off, sending the sailmaker scurrying off amidsts the strained but genuine laughter of the crew.

Captain Lamb made a note in the ship’s log. The dead man was rolled out of camp and buried beneath a blanket of snow. They couldn’t dig a grave; the ground this far north never thawed.

No one talked about that death, nor the ones that came after. Phin observed each silently, feeling the knot of dread in his stomach grow ever tighter. He couldn’t just do nothing. When he helped Daniel Crow prepare the one meal they ate each day, Phin brazenly snatched morsels of food from the pot. Even after the edge had been taken off his hunger, he continued to steal what he could, filling his pockets with hardtack that he would later soak in the snow until it was soft enough to eat. 

He took so much and with such impunity that sometimes he forgot where he had cached it and still more was forced to leave behind when what was left of the crew finally had enough of Captain Lamb’s inaction and so crept away under the cover of the Arctic night, leaving him alone with his fine whiskey and the specter of death. Even dying would perhaps not be so bad, as long as it was on one’s own two feet.

***

With the same urgency that it had come on, the vision of the Arctic dispersed. In the span of one blink to another, Phineas’ consciousness was transported from the endless expanse of the ice to the stifling confines of the townhouse parlor.

Phillip knelt astride his hips, weight pressing down urgently on him. He was in a trance: his gaze vague, hazy, an unblinking stare that seemed to see everything and nothing at once. 

All at once, he sucked in a sharp breath and his eyes drew into focus. “Oh, Phineas,” he murmured. “How could I have known?”

Phineas sighed, straightening up. His heart was still pounding so hard it hurt and there was a sick sinking in the pit of his stomach, but he could bear this. He could shoulder it all.

“You couldn’t have,” he said. Shifting Phillip off of him, he got to his feet. Perhaps he should have checked on the kid again, made sure he was all right, but he couldn’t face him. Not out of shame for his past, but because he was too tired to look Phillip in the eye and pretend that they had not already damned each other in kind. That they were not cursed to relive the same painful cycle, with no respite.

“It was a long time ago,” he went on, measuring out his words carefully. “It’s over. Done. It was just one unfortunate thing that happened.”

“You survived, though,” said Phillip vaguely.

“I did,” Phineas went on. “Forty men went out in that whaler, and seven made it to Fort Fantome. I was one of them, but I don’t ascribe any special meaning to it. I was young and I was lucky, that’s about the long and short of it.”

“You didn’t have any questions, though? When Captain Lamb was here?”

At that, Phineas did look back at him, not without a degree of suspicion. But in his pale, earnest expression there was no malice, no hint of the malediction.

Phineas sighed. “Nothing I wanted to know. Nothing I had to say. Come on, kid, let’s get you out of here.”

Phillip offered his hand so Phineas could help him to his feet. He seemed more steady than he had been, some of his familiar poise restored.

“How’s that cough?” Phineas asked. He felt he needed to say something to change the subject.

“All right,” Phillip replied. “I’m just a little tired.”

“I’ll take you home so you can rest. All this will look a lot more manageable tomorrow.”

“Will it?” Phillip asked.

“It can’t look much worse,” Phineas said. “Let’s just keep our minds on that.”

He took Phillip over to the silk screen so he could change into his street clothes. He made sure the kid was steady on his feet, and then deliberately turned his back and moved to put out the candles.

Phillip’s voice came from behind him. “I didn’t mean for it all to come out like this.”

“It’s in the past,” Phineas said, making a tremendous effort to ensure that his voice sounded causal, blithe. “But I don’t really want to talk about it right now.”

“Will you? Ever?”

“I don’t know what good that would do.”

“Something happened to you back then. Something came over you.”

Phineas’ hand paused, arrested in the act of reaching for one of the candelabras. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did you see the wendigo? What was it like?”

At that, Phineas did look back. Phillip was nowhere to be seen, having already vanished behind the screen. His voice came from back in that dark corner. Gentle as it was now, coaxing and mild, it still gave the impression of issuing from the shadows themselves.

When Phineas didn’t answer right away, he pressed on. “Did you see it? Or did it see you first? Was there something in you that it liked?”

The twisted, skeletal shape against the snow. Cloven of hoof and black of eye. Thin beyond emaciation, but crowned by a glorious rack of antlers. That creature of famine and greed had never been as real as the hunger and the fear of a small boy, stranded on the ice.

Phineas shook his head fiercely, banishing the image of the spirit from his mind.

“It’s just a story,” he said firmly. “There was never anything to see.”


	11. Chapter 11

It was bitterly cold when they arrived back at the house. Though the sun was still high and bright in the clear sky, it seemed to have been robbed of its warmth. A chill wind began to blow, lifting dead leaves from their heaps on the ground and sweeping them beneath the wheels of Phineas’ private car with a sound like the breaking of bones.

The blunt edge of it struck Phineas full in the face as he stepped out of the cab, a biting cold gust that caused tears to well in his eyes. Without intending to, he turned his face into the wind and glared, as if it had personally offended him. He favored the changing weather with his scorn for a moment before turning back to help Phillip.

The younger man had grown taciturn to the point of muteness, silent all the long way from the city. Though he was no longer coughing and sickly - at least not to Phineas’ eye - his pale quietude was almost more worrisome. It was as if something had gone missing from within him.

Phineas paid the driver and then reached back to offer Phillip his arm. His hand came to rest with delicate grace in the crook of Phineas’ elbow, where his fingers gripped almost hard enough to bruise.

“Let’s get you out of the cold,” Phineas said, vaguely. He scarcely felt the sharp bite of Phillip’s fingers cutting into his skin. 

Inside, Phillip ascended to the attic room without complaint. He did not ask Phineas to accompany him, nor did Phineas offer. There was nothing more he could think to say to him.

He made himself busy sending the staff away; there was no sense getting them involved in whatever was to come. For all his grand imaginings, Phineas honestly had no idea how things might shake out, but he knew that he didn’t want to cause trouble for anyone else. No, this mess was entirely of his own making and it was his responsibility to deal with it.

All of that was well and good, but he had no idea where to start. A deep sense of dread arrested him at the thought of having to confront Phillip again. He didn’t even know how much of the real Phillip was left, whether he had truly been himself since the fire. When Phineas thought of all that had happened since then, it filled him with an excess of nervous energy. From that first kiss in the townhouse parlor, a wild and reluctant hope had begun to take root within him. Against all his better judgement and all he had once thought he wanted out of life, he had found himself wondering if genuine affection might be developing between Phillip and himself.

Phineas had never asked for it, never even dreamed of it too vividly, but when the moment came he knew that he wanted it. Now, though, he could not even be sure if it had been real.

There was no sense in pretending that something supernatural was not happening under his own roof. Phineas had resisted it this long, but not for a lack of evidence or the appearance of any other logical explanation asserting itself. It had been clear from the beginning that something was terribly wrong, and yet he had not been willing to believe what was before his very eyes. Despite his imaginative and fanciful nature, Phineas had always considered himself a man of reason; and yet, when the truth had been plain and undeniable, he had made every excuse to disbelieve it.

Even now, it was almost impossible to say in so many words, but he knew that he must try.

“There is something wicked in this house,” Phineas declared, aloud and to the empty hall. The words were small and insufficient, made all the more ridiculous by the cavernous space. Embarrassed by the poor acoustics, Phineas paced into the more intimate dining room.

A tray of liquor bottles glittered on the sideboard: brandy and gin. Phineas’ eyes fell on them at once and were hard to tear away. By god, he wanted a drink -- deserved one even. This monastic self-imposed denial he had forced on himself ever since returning from Europe was absurd in the extreme. Who was he trying to convince?

He still kept the bottles only because Charity had been fond of a glass now and again. After the children were in bed, she would drape herself over one of the couches in the sitting room and work her way through a snifter of brandy, completely absorbed in the act, sometimes savoring each sip for so long that Phineas retired to bed before she was finished.

Phineas supposed he had known for some time now that Charity was in no hurry to return from the sophistication and elegance of Europe. It was another hard truth that he had been avoiding. Still, better to take these things one at a time, as they came. Forcing himself to turn his back on the sideboard and the cold comfort it promised, he tried again.

“There’s something wicked in this house. Phillip brought it here.”

He shook his head fiercely. No, that wasn’t it. Phillip was not to blame; you couldn’t fault a man for his demons.

“It’s attached to Phillip,” he corrected. “But that is perhaps incidental. It could have been anyone.”

Again, that did not quite seem right. Whatever the malediction was, it seemed uniquely capable of using all that Phillip had to its advantage. His pretty face, luminous eyes, his ability to embed an entire tale in a pause or a gesture, in between the words.

It hit Phineas suddenly: for all his fretting and worry, it had never occurred to wonder what the thing wanted.

He thought of the wendigo. Daniel Crow had made clear that the Ojibwa iteration of the spirit was but one version, one way of telling. Though the story might change, the creature’s intention never did. It was avaricious, and its greed was never satisfied. To acquire more, consume more, was its only goal.

It was something Phineas almost understood.

The thought brought him up short. It seemed absurd on the surface, that a dyed-in-the-wool booster and striver like him might have anything in common with that mindless beast of the frozen wilderness. But had he not been mindless from time to time as well? In his wanting, his desperate need to prove himself the best? To prove that he deserved all he had, and more?

Phineas cut the thought short. One moment it was winding its tendrils over and around his mind; the next, he had torn it out by the roots. It was one of his more reliable talents, the ability to shut down a potential neurosis or inefficiency of thought before it overcame him.

This wasn’t about him. It was about his protege, and the thing that clung to him now. Perhaps Phillip had been the one who was inefficient and neurotic, to allow something like that in.

He was getting nowhere like this. Irritated, Phineas marched resolutely back to the sideboard and poured himself a glass of whiskey. He sipped it, barely wetting his lips, but jerking his chin back defiantly as he did so as if he meant to down the whole glass at once. Scowling, he choked the liquid down. It was awful; he had all but lost the taste for it.

With a sigh, Phineas tossed the rest of the liquid into a potted plant. He couldn’t just sit here getting drunk and feeling sorry for himself. Grabbing the newspaper off the stack of unread mail on the table, he again submitted to the long ascent up the stairs to the attic room. He wasn’t sure what he could say to Phillip now, or what Phillip could say to him, but he felt that he had to see him. Though there was much he couldn’t be certain of, one thing he knew beyond any doubt was that it was better when they were together.

He rapped lightly on the attic door, and then entered. Phillip was standing by the window, leaning against the sill. He turned when Phineas entered, and for an instant Phineas felt a creeping dread steal over him until he saw that Phillip’s eyes were clear and blue. Ringed by shadows, but unmistakably his own.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said with an apologetic smile.

“I figured that might be the case,” Phineas replied. “I came to keep you company.”

“That makes me glad,” Phillip replied. He turned, reeling back on his heel as if the familiar motion unbalanced him, and held his hand out.

Though he supposed he knew exactly what he was getting into, Phineas came forward, first pressing Phillip’s extended palm, then lacing their fingers together. He lifted their hands to eye level, marveling at the entwined digits.

“Why don’t you get off your feet?”

“You act as if I’m on my death bed,” Phillip said softly. His lips twitched into a smile, faint but genuine. Happy, Phineas realized with a jolt, to see him. 

It seemed natural, inevitable even. Phineas leaned in and kissed him.

He felt Phillip go rigid in his grip, gasping against his lips. It seemed like he’d been waiting for this, hoping for it, but when Phineas had actually up and done it he’d been surprised.

Not that he protested for long. After the initial flurry of movement, he relaxed, leaning back against the wall, tilting his face back so Phineas could reach his lips more easily.

They broke apart, only far enough to catch their breath. Phineas kept his forehead pressed to Phillip’s temple, the rough stubble of his jaw skating over Phillip’s flawless cheekbone. He felt a pressure on his hip, the weight of Phillip’s hand coming to rest on his waist, tracing its curve.

“Do you know what I want?” he murmured. “Did you know even before I did?”

At that, Phineas paused, and breathed a gasp of laughter over Phillip’s throat. “Kid, I had no idea.”

Admitting it gave him pause. Phillip was sweet and tender in the extreme, but this was not the time. Before, in bed, they had been close. Yes, right on the verge of something spectacular. But Phillip had changed in an instant then. All had not been well with him then, and it was a mistake to think he was all right now.

Slowly, and with the utmost care, he extracted himself from Phillip’s grip. He saw some quick, tempestuous emotion flash across his face, but Phillip did not protest as Phineas eased him away.

“Ah, I feel a little tired. I must have overexerted myself.”

“You sure have been running full steam lately,” Phineas said. He stroked a lock of Phillip’s hair away from his brow, willing him to forget their momentary lapse into passion. “Why don’t you lie down? I brought something to read to you.”

Phillip smiled indulgently. “I’m not quite an invalid yet. I don’t need to be read to.”

“Just go get comfortable,” Phineas said. “If you weren’t tired before, all the finest buffoons in the society pages will get you there quick enough.”

Phillip’s smile remained, as if it were frozen there. He extracted himself from Phineas’ hold, stepping around him without touching him. Draping himself gracefully, he lay down on the divan, stretching out with his head propped up on the arm. Phineas closed the curtains and retrieved a shawl from the foot of the bed, sweeping it over Phillip so that the voluminous folds washed up and around his face. 

His eyes were half-closed. It seemed that he was making a great effort to behave himself, to be good. Phineas pulled a chair up, setting it a companionable distance away. He opened the paper and began to read.

The front page was made up mostly of dispatches from the Great Plains, where a series of tremendous blizzards were handily cutting through the stock of beef cattle. It certainly explained the unseasonable cold here on the coast. 

There was more: Geronimo and his Apache had finally given up the ghost in the Arizona Territory. Now, there was a hardy fellow, a man people would pay to shake hands with, Phineas thought. He’d have to remember to telegram about it. And then, in case someone thought that New York was no longer the cultural epicenter of the country, there was a good deal of grumbling and fussing from the labor unions to fret over.

After the front page, Phineas went on, plodding through the theater reviews and the business pages. When he glanced over at Phillip, he saw that his eyes were closed, his breathing slow and even beneath the shawl. He seemed to be getting some real sleep for once.

Phineas, who was comfortable enough where he was, read on quietly, though he had about exhausted all the subjects of interest. He flipped the paper over to the last page, where assorted announcements of births and deaths took up an inch or so of column space each.

As a passed his eyes over them, a name suddenly jumped out at him.

Phineas read back, scanning the lines of tiny print until he found it again. Isabella Jameston, the grieving widow, was dead.

He glanced back towards Phillip, making sure that he really was asleep, before he read on. The announcement was a little longer than the others, as was fitting the strange circumstances. A tragic accident, it seemed, had taken the Widow Jameston’s life. She had slipped and fallen at her dressing table, struck her head and knocked herself insensate, collapsing into the little bowl of rose water she had brought out to wash her face and hands.

It was only a shallow dish, but it had been deep enough. The widow, it seemed, had drowned.

Phineas felt as if an iron gauntlet were closing around his heart. A sheen of sweat appeared on the back of his neck despite the chilliness of the room.

But it had been an accident, nothing more. There was nothing else it could have been, save for a second senseless tragedy heaped upon the first. However strangely and memorably the Widow’s life had intersected with his own, she was gone now. It was, perhaps, better for her this way. Maybe she was even at peace.

Hell, it was about the best any of them could hope for.


	12. Chapter 12

There was a part of Phineas that desperately wanted to spend the night with Phillip. He stayed as long as he could, keeping watch over his protege until his eyelids had grown heavy and his chin nodded onto his chest. Another moment and he could have drifted off, companionably at Phillip’s side.

It would have been a mistake.

Phineas knew that by now. Phillip had more than proven how volatile his moods really were. He had gone to sleep with two good blue eyes, but there was no telling what might be looking out at the world when he awoke. 

The malediction would make its presence known in time. It had never been slow or hesitant to do so before. Phineas was sure that he would face it again soon, but there was no need to deliver himself into its waiting jaws.

Quietly folding up the paper with the news of the Widow Jameston’s demise, Phineas rose to leave. Phillip did not stir, not even when Phineas paused to arrange the shawl over him. He was sleeping soundly now, but what if he were to wake alone? Would his first thought be that Phineas had abandoned him?

No, Phineas told himself, steeling his resolve. Phillip would understand why he needed some distance. He knew what he was now, what was happening to him. Indeed he probably understood it better than Phineas himself did. Phillip had, after all, been through something not too dissimilar before.

Moving on tip-toe, Phineas went out and descended the stairs. In the sitting room, he rang for the maid. Once, then again, but no one came. He had sent them all away, he remembered at once. It made him ashamed. He, who had once been so proud of his ability to stand on his own two feet, now resorted without hesitation or second thought to summoning the servants to put his house in order.

Alone in the cavernous rooms of the great empty mansion, Phineas felt lost.

He smoked, for the sake of having something to do with his hands.It was too early for bed, but Phineas supposed he must sleep sometime. He wondered if Phillip would come to him again in a dream, as he had that night in the guesthouse. Phineas could not say whether he was dreading it or anticipating it, only that the notion made his heartbeat quicken.

It wasn’t what he wanted, not like that. But was there not a side of him that hungered for it? A part that was not satisfied with Phillip’s coy kisses and intermittent caresses?

Did not something in him long for what the malediction had to offer? The filthy, hot things that it did with Phillip’s mouth. The way it made everything painless, easy, and certain. Was there not a part of him that called back to the darkness, like to like?

He did not think he was so unusual. Everyone must have some secret desire within him, some perverse urge to buck convention and seize what he really wanted. Phineas had once made it his business to provide a healthy outlet for such unproductive and antisocial cravings. And if the current of those carnal appetites ran deeper and swifter than bright lights or fine costumes or showmanship could penetrate, then that was something each man had to contend with alone.

Phineas leaned back and closed his eyes. The darkness behind his lids and the silence of the empty house felt good.

It was his right to want and to strive, he thought vaguely, the words slipping and sliding over each other as his mind edged towards sleep. If he ever stopped desiring more, maybe he would no longer be human at all.

***

“Wake up.”

Before he even opened his eyes, Phineas felt his brow contracting into a scowl. The slack lines of his face ratched up into tense angles. 

“Wake up, Phineas.”

He was already awake, or at least close enough to get his bearings. Phineas was aware that he was sitting up, fully dressed. He must have fallen asleep on one of the sofas in the parlor, too distracted or overcome to even go upstairs to his rooms. The fingers of his right hand felt stiff, cramped; they were still clutching his pipe, in which the ashes had long since grown cold.

His joints ached from the awkward position and one of his legs was pretty well asleep. Still, he could feel enough to know that there was a weight settled across his thighs that should not have been there.

Feeling a familiar ache begin to throb at his temples, Phineas blinked his eyes open.

Phillip was kneeling astride his lap, pressing forward so that he seemed to tower over Phineas, a black silhouette against the cold morning light streaming in through the windows.

“You look dreadful,” Phillip sneered. “Falling asleep in your clothes like a drunk, or, worse yet, an old man.”

He slapped Phineas’ cheek lightly. “You’re not getting old, are you, my friend?”

Phineas groaned, doing his best to straighten up. Phillip began to pull away, intending to stand, but Phineas caught him by the arms and held him fast.

“Phillip…” he started, but then he shook his head. “Phillip, if you’re in there, don’t give this thing the satisfaction of watching.”

Phillip’s eyebrows went up. “My, you are full of sentimental notions this morning.” 

Though he had been on the verge of rising to his feet, Phillip now settled back onto his knees, planting a hand in the center of Phineas’ chest and pushing him into seat. The light shifted over his face, and then Phineas saw it: Phillip’s eye was almost completely black, so dark that the iris bled into the pupil. There was just one small mote of blue still drifting off-center around the periphery.

“What makes you think that I’m not your Phillip?” he said, shifting forward so that the weight of his body grazed Phineas’ crotch. “Do I not excite you like he does? Am I not beautiful? Do you not ache for me, Phineas?”

Phineas did his best to remain unmoved. He narrowed his eyes, glaring up into that mask of Phillip’s face and said, “Do you think I was born yesterday? I know what’s real.”

“Even love?” Phillip said softly. “Tell me true, do you know real love when you see it? Maybe your Phillip has been dead for a long time, swallowed up by his private darkness. Think, then, of all those sweet words, those romantic gestures, those tears and confessions and ardent hopes. Perhaps it was all a lie. Perhaps those tender moments were when I was cruellest to you.”

Phineas’ eyes narrowed and he made to thrust Phillip back. Phillip reacted with a strength that seemed impossible for his slight frame, catching Phineas’ wrists and pinning them to the back of the divan so that he could not stir an inch.

“What do you want?” Phineas bit out, fixing Phillip with a steady and unflinching look. He was not afraid, not of this. Though his rational mind cautioned him that it would go very badly for him, it was a dread he could not feel in his bones.

Dark fire smoldered in Phillip’s black eye. A shadow alighted briefly on his brow. He opened his mouth, and Captain Lamb’s voice came from the great mystery he kept caged within. “Ask your questions, Phin. Then claim what is yours. I never knew you not to jump at a sure bet like this one.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Phineas replied. “Kill me, or claim me. Do whatever you think you have to do. But I’m not going to play this game. I don’t need a damned medium to tell me what to feel guilty about.”

“Alas.” Slowly, Phillip released him, leaning back once more. He banished Captain Lamb before he went on. “I thought you wanted everything, Phineas. Was I wrong in my assessment of you?”

“I don’t want this.”

“As you wish.” Phillip pushed to his feet, though he lingered a moment more, looking down at Phineas. “You just tell me when it gets to be too much.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

Phillip smiled, a lovely smile without humor. “He misses me when I’m gone, you know. Your Phillip knows that I am all for him. He told you of his melancholy, of the asylum, and that is all well and good, but he didn’t tell you everything. Did you know that he used to wait for the darkness to return? How he used to yearn for it.”

Phineas’ eyes narrowed in thought. “He said that it was a part of him, as much as anything else. But that’s not the same thing.”

“No,” Phillip said. “It isn’t. For the absence of despair is not necessarily joy. The darkness left him, but nothing came to fill the vacuum that remained behind. His pain made him tragic, romantic. Without it, he was just a wastrel destined to lose even his looks eventually. Why else would he have thrown his lot in with you, Phineas, unless it was because he longed to destroy himself before the world could.”

“That’s not--” Phineas started to say, but he had not the strength to finish. He could not deny the malediction’s words; they provided as plausible an explanation as any Phineas had considered. He had hardly dwelled on Phillip’s motivations, scarcely considered why he might have turned his back on his old life. Phineas had always assumed it had been something he had done, or said to convince him, as unlikely as that might be.

It had not occurred to him until that moment that Phillip might have had his own wild longings, and desperate hopes, and sad concealments.

“I’m sorry,” Phineas said, his shoulders slumping. “Phillip, I’m very sorry.”

He glanced back at Phineas, and for an instant a look of contempt registered in the delicate lines of his face. Phillip seemed about to speak again, but it was at that moment that the bell mounted on the front door chimed. He threw his head back like a beast scenting the air, and then he strode with swift purpose to answer the door.

From the foyer, Phineas heard their visitor say a few words in greeting, which were promptly cut off when Phillip slammed the door in his face. He came back into the sitting room with a handful of letters from the post. As he walked, he thumbed through them until he found the one he wanted, and then he dropped the rest carelessly to the floor.

“Here,” he said, tossing the envelope at Phineas so that it struck his chest and fell into his lap.

Phineas looked down at the address of the townhouse etched in heavy black print and his heart fell into his boots. “Please,” he said quietly. “No more. Not again.”

“Yes,” Phillip said coldly. “Once more, and then we shall reevaluate our arrangement. You are the one who refused a seance, and so I must look elsewhere for someone more willing to play along. Do this for me, Phineas, and for this body.”

Phineas hesitated for a long moment, his hands hovering over the letter but his eyes fixed on Phillip’s beautifully cruel face. He thought, fleetingly, of the Widow Jameston. Dead in that empty house where she had waited in a state of stoic hopefulness for news of her husband’s ship.

It had been an accident, nothing more. One senseless tragedy heaped atop another. The papers had said as much, and there could be no other explanation.

Phillip had not moved or attempted to speak. It seemed he did not have to, for Phineas’ numb fingers were already closing around the letter, tearing it open, agreeing to he knew not what.

***

As if in a daze, Phineas made the appointment at the townhouse for the next day. 

The letter had come from one Rayford Prince, a young lawyer, and a successful one by most accounts. He was acquainted with Mr. Stavros through a gentlemen’s club they both frequented, and he had heard that the medium was capable of the most unique feats. 

There was something curious about the note, something odd. Phineas, in his rattled mental state did not realize what it was until later: Mr. Prince had not included any details of the spirit he wished to contact. The previous letters had both read as elegies or eulogies, each word haunted by the spirits of the dead.

Phineas’ intuition cautioned him that something was wrong, but he could not bring him to cancel the seance. Just once more, Phillip had told him. After this, something would have to happen. Phineas no longer held out much hope that it would be easy, but he could not allow the situation to continue as it was. The center would not hold; they were bound to fly apart.

If Phillip had any misgivings about what was to come, he gave no indication. Phineas watched him surreptitiously, not daring to do much more than glance at him out of the corner of his eye, as he moved blithely around the empty halls, picking at the piano and thumbing through the leather bound books that lined the shelves in the library, breaking the spines on many of them for the first time.

To the untrained eye, he would have looked like any other well-heeled young man, charming even in his idleness and boredom. Phineas longed to be fooled, but was not able to manage the pleasant fiction.

On the morning of the seance, they took the train into the city together. Phillip went without complaint, taking a place at Phineas’ side in the smoking car and not moving for the entire journey. He sat perfectly still, his knees pressed together and his mismatched eyes fixed straight ahead.

He did not speak a word. Phineas at first took it as a bad sign, until he realized he could not think of a single thing to say either. With great care to do so casually, neither making a fuss nor drawing attention, Phineas reached over and took Phillip’s cold hand in his own. His fingers twitched, once, but he did not pull away.

Phineas read it as an auspicious omen. God knew he should find them where he could get them. 

They took a cab to the townhouse and Phineas lingered downstairs while Phillip ascended the stairs to change. He took the letter from Rayford Prince out of his pocket and read it over again, just to have something to do with his hands. 

It was a perfectly respectable request from a perfectly respectable man. And yet, as Phineas’ eyes traced the tasteful letterhead on the paper, the perfectly-formed script on the page, he could not shake the feeling of unease that stole over him. Before he could think better of it, he was hastening up the stairs to the upstairs parlor.

He entered just as Phillip was stepping from behind the Chinese screen, dressed in the long flared coat and broad belt of his circassian costume. His Hessian boots were polished to gleaming, the prop dagger at his waist was tilted at a bold angle, his eyes shone vibrant beneath a heavy layer of kohl. Everything was arranged perfectly, and yet Phillip seemed now more than ever before to be wearing the pitiful rags of a tawdry costume.

With a frown, Phineas crossed to the window where the harsh afternoon sunlight streamed in. He drew the curtain, plunging the room into shadow. It hid the flaws, blurred the edges where illusion and reality met. When Phineas turned back, he was facing not Phillip but rather the dark, enigmatic, benevolent visage of the spirit medium. 

It was just a character and a thin one at that, a fairy tale for the broken down and grieving. But it was the last thing he and Phillip had created together.

A sudden spasm of emotion gripped him and Phineas staggered forward, catching hold of Phillip’s shoulders and holding them hard. “You don’t have to do this.”

Phillip lowered his eyes and so whatever emotion registered on his face at those words was lost to the darkness. Moving slowly, weightlessly, as if underwater, he reached up and detached Phineas’ hands from his shoulders.

“I think that I do,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, Phineas.”

Phineas made himself let go. He refused to be angry or frustrated this late in the game. “Just one more, right? That’s what the thing said. Once more, and then we’ll go home.”

“Home?” Phillip echoed. His brow furrowed. “I don’t know where my home is.”

That was the one thing Phineas could not abide. He seized Phillip’s hand in both of his and pressed it savagely, squeezing so hard he could feel the small bones in his fingers shifting in his grip.

“Your home is with me,” he said. His voice had a raw and exposed edge to it which frightened him. “You belong wherever I am.”

Phillip stared at him for a long moment, as if Phineas had suddenly started speaking in tongues, and then he lowered his head. “No. Don’t say that.”

“Why not? I meant it.”

“Then you don’t understand what I have been trying to tell you all this time. I’ve been sick all my life. It will come for me again, the darkness.”

“I don’t care,” Phineas said instantly. “If it’s part of you, as you say, then I’ll learn to like it.”

“It can’t be cured. You cannot wish it away with your vigor and your hard work. Nor can you banish it with your optimism.”

Phineas cupped Phillip’s face between his hands, tilting his chin back and forcing him to meet his eyes. “I don’t care,” he said again, and he meant it.

Phillip watched him for a long moment. His blue eye was flat and unreadable, though in the depths of the black it seemed that a hot and fierce intelligence was at work. But it was not what spoke when Phillip at last let out a sigh and murmured, “Then may God save us both.”

His entire body swayed forward. It was a quick and violent motion, but when it ended with Phillip’s head resting on Phineas’ chest, his touch was light. Phineas’ hands trembled as he first set them on Phillip’s hips, then crossed them at the small of his back, wrapping his arms around him. 

He felt like he could have stayed that way for a long time, utterly lost to the world, but he scarcely had time to get comfortable before he heard the chime of the doorbell.

Phillip pulled away, straightening up. “That will be our client.”

Busying himself straightening Phillip’s lapels, brushing a stray lock of hair back into place, Phineas said, “Are you ready?”

“Yes, I am.”

Phineas nodded, but as he stepped back Phillip caught hold of his hand and tugged him back. “Wait. I’m sorry, my friend. Not just yet. There’s something I must say first.”

He turned back to give Phillip his full attention, but when the younger man did not speak right away, Phineas smiled gamely and patted his hand. “You don’t have to force anything on my account.”

“Phineas, I--” The words came out in a rush and seemed to stop in Phillip’s throat before he could get the rest out. He screwed his mouth into a pout, which, even under these circumstances, Phineas found utterly charming.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I think I get it.”

“Do you?”

“I know you take me for some kind of insensitive, uncultured rube who never appreciated a poem that didn’t double as a eulogy for a bridge disaster, but I do know a thing or two about what counts.”

“That’s a relief.”

Before they could speak more, the bell sounded again. A distinctly impatient ring that Phineas knew would have to be addressed.

“Tell me when this is all over,” he said, and then he turned to go. His hand shook a little, but he managed to get the door closed behind him before he pressed it hard against his racing heart.

In the foyer, he paused, glancing into the vanity by the door and forcing his face into some semblance of calm. Then he flung the front door wide, revealing Rayford Prince with hand just raised to ring the bell for a third time.

He was a rake of a man, with piercing eyes and a sensual mouth more inclined to sneer than to smile. Though a great wave of gray hair crested over his brow, he was probably not yet in middle age. Nearly a full head taller than Phineas, he was nevertheless narrower around the shoulder and severely pinched waist.

His suit was a fine gray wool, the collar trimmed with a fringe of white ermine. It was expensive, tasteful, and utterly unsuited for mourning.

“I had heard you run a professional operation,” Mr. Prince said, looking down his nose. 

Phineas had been subject to such disdainful looks before; they never got any easier to endure. He squared up his shoulders, thrust out his chin. It didn’t help much. Unfair, beyond unfair, that even after all this time to be reduced in an instant to that pitiful urchin from the past.

“I was with the medium,” Phineas said with what he hoped was dignity but feared was only self-importance. 

“Then I assume he’s ready to receive me.”

Without waiting for an answer, Mr. Prince brushed past him and into the foyer. He tossed off his coat, flinging it into Phineas’ arms without sparing him a glance. By the time he had hung it up, Mr. Prince was already ascending the stairs. Scowling, Phineas scurried after him.

He glowered at Mr. Prince’s back as he followed him up. How a man like this could have been acquainted with a mild-mannered, soft-hearted fool like Martin Stavros eluded him. Phineas glanced down at Mr. Prince’s hands, and found them long and elegant. Though they were thin and graceful, they looked like they could grip hard enough even to bruise.

In a matter of minutes now, those detestable hands would be all over Phillip. Pawing at him, despoiling him.

Phineas’ stomach turned over at the thought. He ought to have called the whole thing off, but it was the last one. Phineas clung fast to that hope. If Phillip was prepared to end their shared nightmare, then Phineas could certainly endure it a little longer.

At the door to the upstairs parlor, Phillip showed them in with a sweep of his arm. Mr. Prince paused before he entered, fixing Phillip with a brazen stare, taking the measure of him from head to toe. Satisfied, it seemed, with what he saw, he stepped inside.

Phillip turned to follow him, but Phineas caught his shoulder and said in a low voice. “Be careful with that fellow. I’ve got a bad feeling.”

“It won’t let anything happen to me,” Phillip murmured. “The other, I mean.”

“I’ll be right next door.”

Phillip shook his head. “No, not this time. Phineas, please, I don’t want you to see this.”

“I can’t just leave you,” Phineas protested.

“Take a walk.” Phillip fixed him with a level stare. “Come back soon. This will be all over and we can go home.”

“Home,” Phineas said. “Sure.”

He knew it was a mistake to leave, but it might be worse still if he stayed. As he started down the stairs he heard Phillip’s quiet voice. “Let’s begin,” he said, and then closed the door behind him.


	13. Chapter 13

There was a bitter chill in the air when Phineas stepped outside, and it had begun to snow. He wandered aimlessly, shivering in the cold.

He had to walk; he could do nothing but walk. How well he could imagine everything that must be happening in his absence, as if he were right there in the upstairs parlor. Little good it had done him to get away when he already knew that it would begin with the completing of the circle, then three questions asked and answered, and at last the retreat to the parlor sofa.

It was a ritual, he realized. The exact steps mattered little, only that they were followed. It was the performance of them that gave them power, not the acts themselves. In all likelihood, it could have been anything. Any combination of events could be imbued with mystical significance, so long as all in attendance agreed upon their power.

Phineas himself had conceived the idea of the spirit medium; in some sense, then, he had forced this upon Phillip. Things might have gone differently if his first inclination had not been to create a show out of the bones of their tragedy. To turn a profit, as modest as it might be, as if it was only through the acquisition of capital that he and Phillip might find some common ground and way of connecting.

Surely by now Phillip had finished the questions, drawn Mr. Prince back to the divan and given himself over to him. In a few minutes, Phineas would have to go back, pick up the pieces, do what he could.

It was all his fault. Perhaps it had always been his fault, all the way back to the beginning; his ambition that had damned them all in kind.

The thought brought Phineas up short. He stopped dead in his tracks, so abruptly that a pair of ladies promenading behind him nearly collided with his back. Flustered and unsettled by their exclamations of surprise, Phineas bowed his head and stepped aside to let them pass.

He just needed a moment. If he could just catch his breath, then he would be able to return and face whatever awaited him.

A newspaper seller had set up a small table to display his wares on the curb next to him. Phineas found his eyes drawn to the front page of the _Tribune_ , passing over the headlines once, twice, as if trying to make sense of them. 

There had been a murder. That was nothing new in the city, and Phineas had never before felt a need to keep apprised of the latest crimes and tragedies. But there was something about the promise of lurid details that would not let him look away.

All at once, Phineas realized it was not the headline that had caught his attention; it was the name printed a few lines below. His eye had registered it before his brain had: Martin Stavros.

In a flurry of movement that almost set the whole stack flying, Phineas snatched up the top paper. He tossed a coin to the seller, not even waiting to see if it reached him before he turned on his heels and fled back towards the townhouse. He folded the paper in front of him as he walked, scarcely watching where he was going, scattering the other pedestrians before him.

His hands shook as he read the first few paragraphs of the account. It was true: Stavros was dead, bludgeoned beyond recognition in a Hell’s Kitchen hotel. It scarcely made sense, that a respectable bourgeois like him would have any business in a slum. Something had surely lured him there, and to his death.

However it had happened, he had gone to join that fellow now. Thadeus Harrington, Phineas thought, surprised he had managed to dredge the name out of the depths of his memories. He had died in a riding accident, from a blow to the head.

The paper slipped from Phineas’ numb fingers. He did not try to retrieve it, and the wind caught it and swept it away. 

A blow to the head, the same as Stavros. And what was it the malediction had said to the Widow Jameston? Her husband had perished by drowning, just as the Widow herself, in that strange and improbable accident in her home.

It was coming back to claim them.

That was the purpose of the seances, the ritual the malediction used Phillip’s body to enact. It had placed its mark upon them somehow, and in doing so it was able to take their lives. It was why the evil did not manifest immediately after the seances, why Phillip was granted a moment’s reprieve. That was when the creature worked upon its victim; that was why it always came back stronger.

Scarcely caring that he must look deranged, Phineas broke into a run. His only thought now was to get back in time to stop the ritual, to prevent Phillip from doing something else he could not take back.

He raced up the steps and burst through the front door, sparing a glance at the rack and relieved to find Rayford Prince’s coat and hat still firmly in place. He hastened up the stairs, taking them two at a time. The door to the parlor was shut, and Phineas pounded on it, calling out, “Mr. Prince? Phillip?”

There was only silence, and then, from within, an abrupt racket: shattering glass and furniture overturned.

Without hesitation, Phineas put his shoulder against the door and forced it open. The light from the hall illuminated the dark room, falling directly over the divan and temporarily blinding the two people on it, but allowing Phineas to see everything clearly.

Rayford’s hand was wrapped around Phillip’s throat, holding him down against the cushions. Phillip clutched at his wrist with both hands, digging his fingers into the flesh hard enough to draw blood but still evincing no reaction at all from his attacker. Rayford, it seemed, was used to it.

Phillip’s eyes rolled towards the door and he gasped out, “Phineas, help me.”

Phineas was already in motion, hurdling the toppled table in the middle of the floor and grabbing Rayford by the shoulder to haul him off. “Leave him be!”

Rayford did not yield easily, remaining bent over Phillip long enough to thrust him back roughly before rising to his feet. He took hold of Phineas’ wrist in a crushing grip and removed his hand. “What are you, his pimp?”

Fortunately, Phineas had not forgotten how to throw a punch. His fist connected solidly with Rayford’s jaw, sending him staggering. Phineas did not move to pursue him, but instead turned to Phillip who was struggling to sit up, clutching at his bruised throat.

“He killed them,” he managed to rasp out. “He murdered Martin Stavros. I saw it, saw everything. He said that he would help him forget his loss, better than any spirit medium could. He took him to that hotel and then he--”

Phillip broke off, coughing. He pressed a hand to his lips, unable to go on. Phineas scarcely had time to take in all he had said before he caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye.

He looked up, just in time to see Rayford Prince bearing down on him.

A terrible rage contorted his face, darkening his brow and forcing his lips back into a snarl. Phineas put an arm up, more to shield Phillip and himself, but Rayford seized him by the shoulder and lifted him as if he weighed nothing. His fist was like a hammer when it connected with Phineas’ temple.

Phineas stumbled back a step, his ears ringing and sight already blurring into darkness. He managed to catch hold of one of the shelves lining the room, sending a shower of crystals and mystical junk to the floor. A moment later, Phineas’ knees unhinged and he landed among them.

He did not lose consciousness, but for a moment his vision was overtaken by a blizzard of white that blotted out all else, even himself. Phineas blinked furiously until his head began to clear. He had collapsed to the floor in a sitting position, his back pressed against the wall.

A shadow towered over him, a terrible presence: Rayford Prince, the knuckles of one hand stained with blood, his face twisted into a demonic countenance.

From behind him, came the sound of Phillip’s ceaseless cough. It sounded wet, wrong, as if it was no longer just smoke that choked him but instead something solid and organic that must come up.

Phineas opened his mouth to speak, but Rayford drew back a foot and kicked him solidly in the ribs, driving the breath out of him. Phineas doubled over, gasping, turning his shoulder to provide some defense should he continue to attack.

Rayford did not try to strike him again, at least not all at once. He did not move at all, seemingly content to watch Phineas squirm about and suffer at his feet. Phillip had been right; this man had done this many times before.

Seized by a very different fear than the one he felt when he faced the malediction, Phineas turned his eyes up again. That was when he saw it: the cloud of darkness beginning to swirl in the air behind Rayford.

Phillip had stopped coughing, and though Phineas could not see him he could imagine him sitting there, rigid and entranced, his eyes staring without seeing, as a horrible blackness poured out of him.

Rayford’s eyes narrowed at the expression on Phineas’ face. “What?” he hissed.

But then he must have felt it too. Whatever animal instinct governed him kicked in, and Rayford whipped around to face the darkness.

He hesitated, falling back a half-step as he tilted his head up to take in the whole opaque mass, which was now coalescing around the ceiling.

“Damned--” Rayford managed to say. Then the black cloud swept forward and was upon him.

A scream came from within the whirlwind, an agonized drawn-out cry, curiously muffled as if it came from some forgotten cell or deep within the earth. Though Phineas scrambled back, pressing himself up again the wall, some of the trailing tendrils brushed against him, stinging him with their coldness.

One side of the cloud ruptured, breaking apart as Rayford burst free of it. His face was a mask of blood, his fine suit torn at the seams. Phineas only caught a glimpse of it really; Rayford was already running full stride, and he did not pause or slow as he broke for the door.

The darkness followed, moving swift and sure, in a single body.

It caught him on the stairs. Phineas did not see it, but he heard it sure enough. The sickening crunch of breaking bone and the wet tearing of rending flesh. And the screaming; a single sustained cry pitching higher and higher until it broke off all at once.

Then, there was only silence.

Phillip interrupted it at last. “God,” he said. “My God.”

He rose from the divan on legs that were reluctant to hold him and stumbled to Phineas’ side, where he all but collapsed.

“I didn’t mean to,” he gasped out. “Phineas, I never wanted--”

He did not finish. His head dropped abruptly to Phineas’ shoulder and he buried his face in his chest, catching hold of Phineas’ lapels and clutching the fabric against his mouth to muffle his screams.

Dazed, Phineas lifted a hand to cup the back of Phillip’s neck, holding him. When he had quieted some, he said, “Are you okay?”

Phillip raised his eyes. “I saw everything,” he whispered. “Everything he did. He has a boarding house. People come there who he does not think will be missed. He has killed so many.”

“I don’t think he’s going to be giving anyone much trouble after this,” Phineas said, and immediately felt guilty for the way Phillip paled. “Stay here. I’ve got to go out there and take a look.”

“No!” Phillip grabbed his arm in a panic, but then almost at once he relented. “What I mean to say is, I’ll go too. I must see it for myself.”

Though neither of them was the steadiest, Phineas managed to get them both to their feet. He kept an arm around Phillip’s waist, holding him close, knowing in his very bones that he was prepared to shield him with his body if it came to that.

It did not seem that it would, though. All was silent and still in the hall.

Phineas nudged the door open with his toe and then made for the stairs. Before the first landing, the banister was scarred and two of the balusters were broken. The wood floors were deeply gouged, as if a tremendous beast had scored them with its claws.

But of Rayford Prince, there was no sign. Not even a corpse.

There was only a little blood smeared on the wall, and a single crimson handprint soaking into the paper. Even these seemed fuzzy, indistinct, and as Phineas drew closer he could see that they were rimmed in black shadows, remnants of the terrible darkness that had descended and then gone.

The black wisps were moving, wiggling energetically around the edges of the bloodstains. As Phineas watched, horrified and yet unable to look away, he realized what was happening. The blood was disappearing before them; the last evidence of Rayford Prince was being devoured before his very eyes.

Phineas’ stomach clenched. He turned away and vomited.

He should never have brought Phillip to see this, he thought. But when he turned back to look at him, Phillip seemed curiously unaffected. He stood placidly at the head of the stairs, his arms hanging limp at his sides, watching the darkness at work.


	14. Chapter 14

There was nothing left of Rayford Prince. Phineas did not think that too many would be broken up to see a fellow like that so completely removed from the world, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He sent Phillip upstairs to change into his street clothes, and then went systematically from room to room, collecting Rayford’s hat and coat from the hooks by the door, his handkerchief from the wreck of the overturned table, his cravat from the floor next to the divan.

This last, Rayford had no doubt removed in preparation of some unspeakable act. It seemed he’d had a great appetite for those.

Phineas glanced toward the silk screen, from the recesses of which came the rustle of cloth, more imagined than certain. “I need to get rid of some things. Can you put this room back in order?”

“Are you worried that there will be trouble?” Phillip’s voice replied. There might be trouble in spades if Rayford had happened to tell anyone he was planning to come to the townhouse, but you would never know it from Phillip’s placid reaction.

“Better safe than sorry, right?”

Phillip stepped around the edge of the screen, doing up the cuffs of his shirt with quick efficient movements. His gaze landed on the divan and lingered, as if he were powerless to look away.

“I don’t want to stay here,” he said quietly.

Phineas’ shoulders slumped and he let out his breath in a sigh. “Oh, that’s right. Sorry, kid. I don’t know where my head’s at.”

He reached out, clapping Phillip on the shoulder. Even that felt like a risk; he didn’t know if he was welcome to touch Phillip after all that had happened. If he hadn’t come back when he did… 

No, better not to pursue that line of reasoning to its conclusion.

“I’ll take care of everything here,” Phineas said. “Go ahead to the station. Don’t wait for me. The snow’s already piling up. They’ll close the tracks if it keeps on like this.”

Phillip regarded him in mute contemplation.

“You can get back on your own all right, can’t you?” Phineas prodded.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Phillip replied. “I feel stronger somehow. Physically stronger, at any rate. Do you think this storm will last long?”

“You can never tell this time of year,” Phineas said. “No need to worry, though. The pantry is stocked and there’s plenty of wood for the stove. So go back to the house and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be along when I can.”

Phillip made no move for a long moment. At last, he nodded reluctantly. “Please, don’t be long. There’s something I must talk to you about.”

“I didn’t forget,” Phineas assured him. “Just go. I’ll be there soon.”

Phillip didn’t even linger long enough for a parting glance. He practically ran down the stairs and out the front door. Phineas supposed he ought to be glad the kid trusted him so well, but he might have at least put up a token fight, made a gesture at staying. Phineas certainly could have used the support. 

Briskly, he righted the toppled table and candelabra, rehung the collapsed shelf and arranged the bric-a-brac. 

By that point, he’d about burned through the last of the adrenaline coursing through his veins. His jaw ached and his eye felt swollen and raw. It had been years since he’d been popped in the face, though he supposed there’d been occasions since when he’d been asking for it. 

Rubbing at the bruise already blooming on his cheek, Phineas dropped down hard on the divan. His legs were trembling and reluctant to hold him. 

He couldn’t afford to lose his nerve now, but he needed a moment to collect himself. He had nearly died, would surely have died if the malediction had not intervened when it had. It was impossible; he could not imagine it. That he, Phineas Barnum, might actually die seemed absurd in the extreme.

It would have been worth it as long as Phillip was safe, but the matter of his safety was far from certain. Though they had eluded it for the moment, Phineas knew now that the malediction had no intention of actually leaving them in peace. No, not now that they both knew what it was, what it was capable of.

He had thought he understood Phillip’s darkness. He’d assumed he could handle it, even master it. Now, he wasn’t sure. If only he had kept it inside, where it belonged, rather than letting the whole ugly and destructive mess out to intrude on the life they were trying to make.

Phineas had been trying; he’d been trying with everything he had.

He wasn’t sure if he could anymore. Phillip was clearly a danger, not least of all to himself. A knot of shame began to form in Phineas’ stomach. He had not forgotten the promise he had made, that he wouldn’t involve the hospitals, but he did not think either of them had known that things would go this badly this quickly.

Phineas lowered his head, pressing the heels of his hands to his temple as if he might by brute force push his thoughts into order. Phillip would not forgive him, but at least he would be somewhere protected, where that darkness within would not be able to hurt anyone else. Phineas had done all he could; he was out of inspiration and at the end of his optimism. It was better to admit defeat before it was too late for both of them.

The realization didn’t make him feel any better, but it was a relief to have decided upon a course of action. Just like the Arctic, he told himself grimly. Now that he had set a course, the only thing left was to keep moving forward.

Sucking in a shuddering breath, he stood up, bundling Rayford’s clothes into his arm. He carried them downstairs and tossed them into the fireplace, where he burned the last traces of the man to ash.

Good riddance, Phineas thought as he stirred the embers to make sure all the evidence was consumed. If only all his problems were so easy to put out of sight and mind.

Squaring up his shoulders, forcing himself to hold his head high, as if he were not borne down by guilt, Phineas left the townhouse and went out into the snow. He did not bother locking up; he knew he wasn’t coming back.

A fine white dust covered the streets, and in the gutters the snow had begun to pile up. It showed no signs of stopping, but there was a little time yet. Phineas knew right where he was going; he made for a bar he was familiar with by now, the one near the city hospital. By this time of day, Doctor Weber was no doubt holding visiting hours at the table in the back. If he was in high spirits, Phineas might persuade him to do a favor.

***

The sun was low in the sky by the time Phineas made it to the station. Gusts of wind whipped the snow into blinding stinging flurries that had chased nearly everyone else off the street. He made it out on the last train, a stroke of luck to be sure. He would get back to the house before Dr. Weber’s colleagues from the hospital arrived. 

Phineas was relieved that he would have a chance to speak with Phillip alone, to apologize, or explain, but he knew as soon as he crossed the threshold that it was not Phillip he would face. Knocking the snow off his boots and hanging up his overcoat, he steeled himself for battle and went inside. 

Phillip’s form was curled languidly on the sofa in the sitting room, nursing a cup of cocoa. The embers of a fire smoldered in the fireplace, but the room was icy cold. When Phineas let out a shuddering breath, it clouded opaque in the air before him.

“At last,” Phillip said. “You certainly took your time, didn’t you?”

He gestured with one hand towards the fire, and the flames blazed up again. Phineas, who had fooled himself into thinking he was fairly steady on his feet, prepared for anything, jumped and flinched away from them. 

Phillip’s face was illuminated, and Phineas saw what he had been dreading the entire trip back from the city: the black blight in Phillip’s right eye had expanded again. Now there was not even a hint of blue iris, not even a ring of white sclera around the periphery. Though it did not seem that it ought to be capable of sight, Phineas knew that it was that cloudy eye alone that saw him as Phillip smiled and said, “I’m glad your physician was so understanding, Phineas.”

Phineas shifted on his feet, aware of the door at his back, the number of steps it would take to reach it if he had to run.

“Is something the matter?” Phillip said. “You seem nervous, my friend. Don’t worry, I’m not cross with you, though I admit I am surprised you actually had the balls to go through with it. This body doesn’t know yet. I thought you might want to break the news to him yourself.”

“It’s for the best,” Phineas replied. His voice felt tight, as if his throat were constricting around the words. “I’m going to send him away, but only so you can’t hurt anyone else.”

Phillip drank the dregs of his cocoa, then set the empty cup aside and reclined on the sofa. “That’s just fine. In case you hadn’t noticed, this body is starting to get quite threadbare. It’s practically ready for the glue factory. We’ve been running ourselves into an early grave trying to please you.”

“I never invited you here. He never wanted you. Don’t try to blame us for your sick perversion.”

Phillip’s lips parted, and for a split second Phineas saw the flicker of a telescopic bifurcated tongue, teasing the air like a viper’s. His stomach turned over, but he forced himself not to flinch or pull away. Not now, when it was nearly over.

“You didn’t ask for me, not in so many words. That much is true. But believe me, I know an invitation when I see one. Listen, though, I will tell you one thing. I admit, I had you wrong from the start. I brought Captain Lamb here for you, and you didn’t have a single thing to ask him. Frankly, Phineas, I thought you must be as obstinate as a mule and twice as stupid. Only later - too late, regrettably - did it occur to me that he was never who you wanted to speak with.”

“I told you, I don’t need to go digging back into the past. I know what happened back then, and I can live with it.”

“So I see,” Phillip said. “You had a rare flash of insight in that. Your weakness and uncertainty does not lie in your past. When you were still a child you wrote a story for yourself, and since then your life has developed just as you always imagined it. It came so easily to you, as natural as one breath into the next, so that you don’t even realize how remarkable it really is, to have everything work out just the way you think it ought to. To get everything that you feel you deserve.”

Phineas knew better than to engage, but he wasn’t about to take any guff about what he had and hadn’t earned from a literal parasite. He huffed, “It was hard work and dedication that got me where I am. Luck didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Beautiful,” Phillip purred. “And precisely why the past lacks any ambiguity for you. You have all you ever wanted, but prematurely. A man of your temperament, you might live another 40 years like this. Whatever will you do with the time? I understand you now, my friend. It is not the past that troubles you, only the future. And so, Phineas Barnum, let’s begin.”

Phillip’s face was inclined only slightly in his direction, but Phineas could see enough of it to know that a shadow passed over it. The black stain on his right eye rippled and vanished, spiraling down into the pit of Phillip’s pupil like water in the drain. Phillip sat up, gasping, a hand flying to his lips to cover a burst of staccato coughing.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Phineas went to his side. Even if this was another of the malediction’s tricks, he didn’t care. He had lost his ability to be frightened of that thing. Gently, he took both of Phillip’s hands in his and held them fast.

“It’s all right--” he started to say, but then Phillip lifted his head and the look on his face froze Phineas’ tongue in his mouth.

“Is it true, Phineas?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is it _true_?” His voice rose to a feverish pitch, and Phineas felt himself reacting to it as if it were a slap.

“It’s true,” he said, hearing the words as they left his mouth, knowing that they sounded less gentle than he had intended. “I got in touch with the hospital. They’re sending someone to pick you up tonight. It’ll be kept quiet, discreet, but you need to go with them when they come. They can help you.”

His voice kept getting harder, his tone more defensive, and Phillip grew paler and more ashen with every word.

“My god,” he gasped out. Though he didn’t move from where he sat or even try to free his hands from Phineas’ grasp, Phillip’s gaze darted away and searched the corners of the room as if looking for respite or rescue. “Am I really so bad?”

“It’s not you,” Phineas said, frustrated that Phillip still stubbornly refused to realize that simple truth. “That thing inside you is more than I can handle. You’ll go, and they’ll look after you. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt, and I can’t solve every little problem on my own anymore.”

Phillip’s eyes came back to Phineas’ face. “And if I lose myself again in there, will you remember who I am, Phineas?”

“I won’t have to,” Phineas told him. “I’ll see you when you come out, and you’ll still be Phillip Carlyle. The same as you’ve ever been.”

A shudder ran through Phillip’s body - Phineas could feel it where their hands were joined - but his expression did not change.

“I understand,” he said, lowering his gaze. “I’ll accept your judgment. You must know what is best.” He swallowed hard against a knot in his throat and went on, his voice little more than a whisper, “Thank you for everything, Phineas. Thank you for being here with me.”

Slowly, he extracted his hands, and stood up. “I’d like to go upstairs and rest before my escort comes, if it’s all the same to you. I won’t make any trouble, I promise. Not for them, or for you.”

“Phillip…” Phineas started to say, but he wasn’t sure what else he could add. Better to let Phillip go then to try to drag absolution out of him, or force another apology from himself. In truth, he did not think he had any reason to ask forgiveness, nor did Phillip have any cause to offer it. This was the way it had turned out, the way it had to be, at least for now. Things would look different with a little time.

Moving with soft steps, as if he were taking great care not to disturb the silence of the empty house, Phillip went up the stairs to the attic. Phineas remained sitting where he was for a long time. At last, he shook himself out of his stupor and retrieved the empty cup from beside the couch and carried it into the kitchen.

He had to pass through the dining room to get there. The curtains on the big picture window that faced out onto the garden had not been drawn, and Phineas paused to watch the snow piling up. The drifts were high now, a white shroud slowly covering all the familiar paths. Charity’s prize rose bushes were already buried to the thorns. The branches still surfacing over the fog of snow were stripped bare and unrecognizable.

This was all it took to wipe out everything he had worked for. Fire and finances and spates of bad luck had tried to claim it, but in the end it was this softly-falling snow that had erased all in the space of a single afternoon, while Phineas wasn’t even looking.

He knew that he was out of sorts. This weather, how could it not remind him of that disastrous expedition to the Arctic? He could see some of that endless white expanse in this, but he could no longer feel what he had back then. Not while he was safe inside, warm and comfortable, with all he could ever desire close at hand.

This was what he had been searching for all along, what he had run towards on the ice when everyone else had only been running away. Security and shelter and well-earned ease; a fortress in which he could hide from the stalking wendigo.

Even now, there were times when Phineas felt that famished creature of legend was close by. He had never seen it, but on still cold nights like this he could hear its faint cry. He had not forgotten Daniel Crow’s warning, though: it was when the wendigo spotted you first that all hope was truly gone.

Tree and wind and stag and wolf, all of these things at once, and something else too, something that was harder to define. Though Phineas had looked hard for the spirit out there on the ice, could he really be sure that he had not encountered it? The wendigo could take many forms; perhaps one had crossed his path unnoticed, taking a shine to a small boy who would steal food with grim and remorseless practicality, taking much more than he needed to survive.

For as long as Phineas could remember, he had wanted fine things, but it was only when he had returned from the Arctic that his desires and fancies had become all-consuming needs. To have more, own more, wrest away all he was owed: such thoughts had obsessed him for nearly his entire life. He had everything he had dreamed of and more now, but, since Phillip had come to stay at the house, Phineas had the disconcerting feeling that it was no longer his alone. He had upset the peace, and, worse still, reminded Phineas of how much he owed him. At this very moment, he stalked the attic rooms, a stubborn admonition to Phineas that he was not really a self-made man, not as long as there had been so many others to bolster him along the way.

All this time, his affection for Phillip had been growing, but something else had come up along with it. The two feelings were entwined so tightly that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the next began, but Phineas could see them both clearly now. For his privilege and his elegance, for his manners and his breeding, but most of all for the fact that he’d had the audacity to give Phineas money and put him in his debt, he both loved Phillip and resented him.

The moment he had laid eyes on him, across that crowded room, Phineas’ first thought had been to bring Phillip under his spell. To control him, to make him his own. For years, he had treated him as the spoils of his war with high society, a beautiful ornament to adorn him in the palaces of Europe and the salons of America. What Phillip had felt about it all, Phineas could not say.

Even now, after everything that had been though, Phineas did not know if he had truly conspired to send Phillip away for his own good. If he was completely honest with himself, could he really say that there was not a part of him that relished having his house back? His huge, empty house, piled high with beautiful and meaningless junk. And then, somewhere out there, his most beautiful acquisition of all, utterly helpless, utterly dependent on him. His possession, at last.

Maybe then, the spirit of the wendigo would finally be satisfied and the bottomless hunger, the boundless ache in his breast, would cease to torment him.

Phineas’ fingers went slack around the cup in his hand. It fell to the floor and cracked, but he barely noticed. He was already turning, already all but running for the stairs. 

This was all wrong; this wasn’t what he wanted. It wasn’t too late, though. He could still set things right.

He burst into the upstairs room without knocking, Phillip’s name already on his lips. He had no idea what he would say to him, but whatever it was it would have to be enough.

Phineas only made it a single step inside. The room was empty and undisturbed. A glint of silver on one of the pillows caught Phineas’ eye, and he moved to the bedside and retrieved a crucifix on a chain. It seemed to have been flung down carelessly, as if Phillip, who had never shown any inclination towards religious sentiment before, had made a final desperate attempt at prayer before giving up and throwing the cross aside in despair.

His stomach twisting in apprehension, Phineas retraced his steps back downstairs. As he passed the hallway that led to the rear of the house, he felt a gust of cold air. A deep feeling of dread stole over him as he followed the draft to its source: the back door was wide open, and a row of fresh tracks led away from the house, disappearing into the woods at the edge of the property.

They were Phillip’s; he was sure of it. Heartbroken and miserable, he had slipped out into the cold. Into the softly-falling snow, where neither of them could hurt the other ever again.

Without pausing even to take his coat, Phineas dashed out after him. Phillip must have a good head start by now, but there was still a hope of catching him.


	15. Chapter 15

The cold closed around him like a vice; fat flakes of snow soaked through his shirtsleeves, melting on his skin like icy kisses. Almost at once, he began to shiver, and his teeth chattered violently. He could all but feel the warmth drawn out of his body, snatched up by the icy wind and swept away.

Conventional thought dictated that a body was either alive or it was dead, with a clean break between the two states. Phineas knew better, for he had seen the many stages in between. He was well aware that his body had begun the long, slow, unglamorous process of dying as soon as he had stepped out into the cold.

Throughout all those long years, he had told himself he had forgotten what it was like. He’d made himself forget, knowing that if he did not shake off the burden he would never be able to become the man he knew he was destined to be. For years now, he had put the past out of his mind, but his body had not been able to so easily disregard what it had endured.

Deep in his bones, he remembered everything.The burn of the cold against his skin, the sting of hunger in the pit of his stomach. The way his fingers and toes had first throbbed and then gone utterly numb, like alien appendages. Even the humiliation of stumbling into Fort Fantome, an ambulatory skeleton, his eyes wild, cheeks flayed by the wind, teeth rattling loosely in his gums. 

They said that three men had been needed to restrain him. Even after he’d reached the safety of the fort, he had wanted to keep walking. It was as if another walked with him, they told him, for his eyes were fixed straight ahead, watching a retreating back that only he could see.

There was something Phineas honestly did not remember, which was not the same as the details that he had deliberately put out of mind. Even as he lived them, he had known that he must obliterate those dreadful days on the ice, or else they would come to be all that defined him. He had done his level best, but still the question remained: Who had it been out there in the cold, the one walking ever before him?

A gust of wind drove the snow back into his face, stinging his exposed skin. Phineas put an arm up to shield his eyes, stumbling on though he was half-blinded. 

All at once, the earth dropped out from under him.

Phineas fell hard on his hip, sliding down an icy incline. He scrambled for a handhold, but brought up only handfuls of snow and wet earth. He came to a stop at last at the foot of a steep embankment, his clothing soaked through and a twisted ankle throbbing inside his boot.

The lake that bordered the rear of the property was spread out before him, covered in a fresh crust of ice. And there, partway out, right where the water started to get deep, stood an indistinct figure, half obscured by the blowing snow. Phineas fixed his eyes on its turned back as he got shakily to his feet.

“Phillip!” he called out. 

His words were snatched up by the wind as soon as they left his mouth, but somehow Phillip heard them all the same. He half turned, glancing back over his shoulder. Even in the fading light, Phineas could see how his lips were tinged blue with cold. The lashes around his mismatched eyes were caked with frost: He had been weeping before Phineas arrived, but he wasn’t any longer.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said in a curious, hollow voice. “I never meant to cause you any more grief.”

Phineas was gripped by a stutter of panic, that immediately froze inside him into a curious and unsettling calm. He abruptly stopped shivering and his teeth ceased to chatter. His entire body went rigidly still. 

“You didn’t,” he said. “You haven’t, not yet. Come back home. We’ll talk things over.”

He saw Phillip’s shoulders lift slightly with a sigh. “I’ve been watching it out there, beyond the white fog. There’s something dark; I think it’s coming closer. Don’t you see it, Phineas? Doesn’t it call to you too?”

Phineas swallowed hard, painfully. It was as if a jagged lump of ice had suddenly lodged itself in his throat. “I’ve seen it before,” he replied. “You just stay away from it, hear me?”

It did not seem that Phillip was listening anymore. He swayed a little on his feet, turning back to face the blizzard. Phineas cursed him internally, but when he spoke again he took great pains to keep his voice blithe and jaunty, as if he were doing nothing more than calling a few words of instruction during rehearsal.

“Just stay there, kid. I’ll come and get you.”

Screwing up his courage, Phineas stepped out onto the ice. He could hear a voice in his ears, as clearly as if it spoke from the wind whipping around him. It pleaded with him to stop, to turn back, to return to the house - his house - where he might barricade every door and window against the cold and be safe from it. 

Phineas ignored it. He knew now, those myriad possessions he had walled around himself would never be enough. 

The ice creaked under his boots, solid on top but not yet frozen through. He kept his eyes fixed on Phillip’s back and made himself keep moving. He couldn’t lose him, not like this. It was the one defeat from which he would not be able to recover.

It had taken him years to realize it, but it was clear to him now: there could only ever be one Phillip Carlyle. This he was certain of, even if he was no longer sure that there was only one Phineas Barnum. 

With slow, sliding steps, he moved out further on the ice, extending a hand toward Phillip. 

“I was wrong,” he said. “I’ve done wrong by you so many times, but we can still fix this. I shouldn’t have gone behind your back like that. You’ve got every right to be angry with me, but I promise I just want you to be someplace safe, even if it isn’t with me.”

He saw Phillip straighten a little as he drew closer. There was a chance he was still listening, and so Phineas kept talking, forcing each word out. “I need you to know something: I’ve adored you from the moment I set eyes on you. I just didn’t know how to handle it. I let it handle me instead.”

Slowly, as if in a dream, Phillip turned back to face him. He stared blankly down at Phineas’ offered hand as if trying to ascertain its function. At last, he reached out towards him.

As his weight shifted forward, a terrible groan came from the ice. Startled, Phillip looked down at his feet.

“Phineas--” he started to say, but that was all he managed. The ice cracked, a dreadful sound that seemed to echo up from the very depths of the lake, shaking them to their very bones.

A fracture appeared beneath Phillip’s heel, rapidly spreading across the smooth top of the ice. Before Phineas’ eyes, the surface began to break apart.

Without pausing to think, he seized Phillip tight around the wrist, jerking him forward and into his arms. Then, turning, he shoved as hard as he could, sending Phillip skidding across the frozen lake and back towards the bank where the ice was thicker.

Phineas lost his balance and his feet went out from under him. He fell, but he did not land on solid ground. The ice parted to receive him, sending him plunging into the frigid lake.

The cold was immediate, absolute, penetrating to the bone. The air was driven from his lungs in a strangled gasp that made a flurry of bubbles form around his face. Disoriented from his tumble into the water, he twisted around and followed those reminders of his lost breath as they rose.

He could see it up there: a faint gray light that indicated the surface of the lake. Gathering his legs beneath him, he kicked upward. Everything below the knee was as numb as a corpse, and that death-sensation was rapidly spreading upward, but Phineas got himself moving, clawing upward through the water.

The gray light grew brighter by degrees, until he could make out the faint shadow of the trees that lined the lake, the motion of the flying snow. His frantic mind cleared long enough for him to think that with the next stroke he would clear the surface, but then his reaching hand collided with a solid wall of ice.

Phineas beat frantically at the underside of the frozen lake, scratching along the ice, looking for the crack he had fallen through. Shadows ate at the periphery of his vision; a darkness absolute and deep was closing in on him. Though he could no longer feel his hands, he knew that his struggles had become weak and fumbling. 

He was dying, he thought, an abrupt sense of calm stealing over him. The darkness closed over him. It had happened; he was already dead.

There was a momentary sensation of sinking, which was arrested just as suddenly. It was as if something had come out of the depths of the cold lake to buoy him up. He had the distinct feeling of being enfolded in that dark presence. It was warm against his frozen skin, giving momentary relief, until he realized that it was beyond simple warmth. The thing was hot, burning. An open flame that somehow blazed unchecked even under the water.

Phineas began to struggle, sluggishly, but a voice against his ear froze him in place.

“Don’t fight, Phineas,” it said to him. “You know me. We are already intimately acquainted.”

It was the voice of the malediction, its unmistakable burning presence. Phineas’ stomach clenched in terror; he had never been this close to it before, not without the shield of Phillip’s body to buffer him. But it was here now, with him. At least that meant Phillip was free of it.

“I don’t want him anymore,” the malediction said sharply, as if if Phineas had spoken aloud. “He’s just another pretty face. You, though, are a man of unique and superlative virtue. I have seen the life you made for yourself, all that you have built. My darling Phineas, imagine what we could do together.”

This wasn’t the first time it had done this, Phineas realized. It had come to Phillip this way, when he was on the verge of death. It had spoken to him while he lay in the coma, whispered honeyed words to him and made him promises. Promises that Phineas could not imagine…

“I told him of an end to pain,” the malediction said. “Not just the pain of the fire, the pain of the moment, but an end to all pain ever. An end to suffering’s entire history. You though, can have whatever you want. More money, more finery. You could even have Phillip, for as long as he interests you, though there are a lot of pretty faces in the world, as I’m sure you will agree.”

It spoke the truth. Somehow Phineas knew that the malediction was not lying to him, at least not outright. Together, they could be the next Rockefeller, a man of real quality and money to spare. He could have more still: an estate in England, the jewels of royalty. Charity would have to come back then. He could buy her back, buy Phillip back. In an instant of vibrant and vivid imagination, he could see Phillip at his feet, mute and lovely, while Phineas stood astride the world.

No, no, it was all wrong. He didn’t want that.

The malediction withdrew before the thought, and Phineas was again seized by a deep cold. He no longer cared.

“You’re a fool,” the malediction snarled. “You’re making a mistake. You’ll die like this, Phineas. No one will find you, no one will remember you when you’re gone.”

That may well have been the case, but it didn’t matter. He was prepared to die as long as he died as himself, not some figment of his own twisted imagination, not a character he had created for himself when he was a child and had no idea the direction his life would really take. It had been a beautiful dream, but it was not a dream that had fallen in love with Phillip Carlyle. No, Phineas had done that on his own; no carefully constructed persona could ever have managed something so illogical and messy.

It may have been the only thing Phineas had that was truly real, and he fixed himself upon it now, like it was a fading beacon in the darkness, as he felt the rejected malediction withdraw, swirling back into the depths from which it had come.

It left only darkness in its wake, and the utter cold of the water. Phineas felt himself sinking, sinking. There was no pain anymore, but a terrible pressure in his chest, as if something wanted to burst free. Phineas still struggled, but weakly and without hope of reprieve. He knew, somehow, that Phillip was away from all this, and that was enough.

All at once, he felt a hand scratching along his back, fingers digging into his sodden clothing in search of a solid grip. They seized him by the collar and he was pulled free of the lake.

Phineas gasped, sputtering up water. He sucked in a burning breath which seared his lungs and sent fire coursing through his veins.

His eyes were open but unwilling to focus properly. He saw Phillip’s face whirling above him, heard the muted echo of his voice: “He’s here! Come quickly, I’ve found him.”

Phillip hauled him out onto the ice. Phineas struggled to catch his breath, but his lungs seemed frozen, utterly unwilling to perform their function. He felt himself swooning down into darkness, but his mind registered brief, disjointed flashes: Phillip beating a fist against his chest, pressing their lips together hard and breathing into him. Tears coming to his eyes as he pleaded, “No, Phineas, no…”

There was the sound of footsteps on the ice. Dr. Weber and the orderlies from the hospital rushed to his side. They had come after all, it seemed, though it appeared to Phineas they were already too late.

He fixed his fading sight on Phillip’s face. All he needed was one more moment, one more word. That would be enough. But it would not come to pass; he was all out of time. 

With Phillip’s arms wrapped around him, he felt himself sinking once more, down into the waiting darkness.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be one more chapter after this one, just to tie up a few lose ends (lots of smut).

For two days and nights, the snow fell steadily and Phineas did not wake. 

Dr. Weber pronounced him out of danger. He offered to stay, but Phillip could see he wanted anything but. He would much rather be back in the inebrial comforts of the city than snowed in with a man who had been half-dead until recently and another who he still considered only half-sane.

Phillip didn’t blame him for that assumption. When he looked in the mirror now, it was two good blue eyes that stared back at him. He knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he had been freed from that malicious presence, but he had made very little effort to exonerate himself or explain his actions. In good time, he supposed, a reckoning would come and he would be forced to issue some formal statement. However, for the moment, in that huge empty lonesome house, all was peaceful and well, and he was grateful for that. 

The master bedroom had been set aside for Phineas’ recovery. It was a cavernous space, with a towering ceiling and furnishings as large and unwieldy as a fleet of barges. Even awake and fully alert, Phillip doubted that Phineas’ expansive personality could fill such a room completely. Dead asleep with every spare blanket Phillip had been able to find heaped around him, he didn’t stand a chance.

Every time Phillip entered, he was struck anew by how small and defenseless Phineas looked now. This man, who had walked through the fire and upon the water -- he too could be reduced to the sum of his mortality.

It in no way diminished him in Phillip’s esteem. He had known the extent of Phineas’ utterly charming, completely exasperating flaws for some time now, and so he was more than prepared for this new and unexpected display of weakness. With the competence of a nurse and the tenderness of a nun, Phillip watched over his former mentor, and waited for him to awaken.

They would have a lot to say to each other then, Phillip imagined, even if, at the moment, he could not think of a single word. 

To fill the silence, he sat at Phineas’ bedside and read aloud to him. The downstairs library was full of books, all of them real, practically none of them ever taken off the shelves. After some searching, he found two volumes that had their pages cut and the look of having been handled: the _Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius, and Thoreau’s _Walden_.

Phillip had never much cared for the last good emperor and the first wise American, considering them both rather facile and blue-nosed in their philosophizing. Though there was some comfort in letting his mind relax back into the familiar passages, those endless exhortations to self-reliance and dignified endurance meant no more to him now than they had the first time he had visited them. Obviously, something about this had appealed to Phineas, though. If only he would awaken, so that Phillip could ask him to explain…

On the second day of the snowstorm, Samuel and Clara Hallett arrived from next door in a sleigh piled high with blankets and buffered with foot warmers. Phillip knew Charity’s parents socially, though he supposed he hardly counted among their intimates anymore. He was surprised they had come after all this time; he imagined they had heard about the accident on the ice and needed to see for themselves if they were to be relieved at last of their unwanted son-in-law.

Phillip resented them for intruding on his solitude, but this was still a game he could play with the best of them. He showed them in, served them with his own hand, ignored their brazen stares. They wanted very badly to know what he was doing here, but they would not ask and he might not have been able to tell them even if he had wanted to.

Phineas was well, he assured them, aware that he was reverting to the polished tones of the parlor and the gentlemen’s club and the governor’s ball. It was a relief to know he could still act the part of the privileged son when the occasion arose; he had always considered it his bravura performance.

By the time Phillip had finished with them, they had become almost agreeable. They would send fresh food and a man to cut more wood, and give Phillip two of their Finnish maids on loan to help get the house in order. 

Phillip wanted to refuse. He could only imagine all the ways they would interrupt his blessed silence. However, in the end, he had to admit it really was too much for one person to do all on his own.

It seemed forever before the Halletts took their leave, darting curious glances back over their shoulder at him the entire time. When they were gone at last, Phillip went back inside and immediately to Phineas’ room.

His mentor had not stirred, but his color was good, his pulse steady, and his breathing unlabored. Satisfied, Phillip picked up the copy of _Walden_ and resumed reading: 

“The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated.” He was aware that his voice retained some measure of its choirboy polish; it would be some time before it faded completely. “We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.”

As he reached the end of the page, Phillip chanced to glance up. Phineas’ eyes were open, and he was watching him in rapt and attentive silence.

Phillip’s hands trembled and the book fell from them, into a heap on the floor.

“Thank God,” he said, moving forward to Phineas’ side. 

Phineas’ lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Don’t try to talk yet,” Phillip told him, setting a hand on his brow as Phineas furrowed it in irritation at finding himself so suddenly unable to apply his golden tongue to the situation.

Phillip took the pitcher of water from the table next to the bed, poured a glass and fed it to Phineas in sips. He submitted with a surprising lack of protest at having his precious autonomy taken from him. He kept his eyes fixed on Phillip’s face as he dutifully emptied the glass, then he cleared his throat and said quietly, “Thank you. That’s a lot better.”

Phillip’s breath left him in a sigh of relief. He was slow to recover from it, and he had to turn and set the empty glass aside while he regained his composure. When he came back, it was to brush Phineas’ tangled hair away from his face. “You must be indestructible. Though I doubt you even have the decency to appreciate that.”

Phines rolled his shoulders beneath the pile of blankets, his lips quirking into a tired smile. “What do you say you untruss me a bit? Hard to appreciate coming back from the dead when you’ve got me wrapped up tighter than Ramses in his tomb.”

“You lost a lot of body heat,” Phillip told him. He began to untuck some of the blankets, loosening them so Phineas could raise himself on the heaped pillows. “Dr. Weber said that the cold probably saved your life.”

He folded back the covers, smoothing them down with a steady and conscientious hand. Phineas worked one arm free and, before Phillip could protest, Phineas’ caught hold of his shoulder and pulled him down to meet his lips.

Phillip’s toes curled. His hands found Phineas’ biceps and clutched at them. They had kissed before - quite a few times, by Phillip’s admittedly hazy memory of the past few weeks - but it was as if it were happening for the first time. The sensation spread through him, trickling down from his parted and searching lips like liquid heat.

There was nothing standing between them now. Before, even when they had been at their most ardent, it had been as if they groped and fumbled at each other from opposite sides of a heavy curtain, able to discern vague shapes but not the finer details. The veil had been ripped aside now, and Phillip experienced with the full extent of his senses. It was as if he had become preternaturally aware, attuned to every slight shift of muscle in the body pinned awkwardly under his, every vibrant color, and sound, and taste.

It was all too much to bear. Keeping his hands on Phineas’ shoulders as if to hold him at bay, Phillip leaned back. His expression remained stubbornly neutral, unreadable, though his tongue did flick out briefly to taste his curiously sore lips.

“You might at least tell me you are all right,” he sniffed, mortified by the tone he heard in his voice. In the overwhelming heat of the moment, he had retreated back into the same cold, clipped inflections he had used when shooing the Halletts out of the house earlier.

Phineas only laughed at him, a soft hoarse sound that could only have been utterly genuine. “You should see the look on your face. Sorry, kid, but I had to know for sure that it was really you.”

The words caused a knot to form in the pit of Phillip’s stomach. “It’s me,” he said quietly, not knowing how he could possibly convince Phineas. Ever since that night on the ice, it had been as if something had given way inside of him. The transformation had been so abrupt and yet so complete that Phillip had started to take it for granted. Of course Phineas, who had gotten the worst of it, could not be expected to know, or believe him, or even care when Phillip had caused him so much grief.

“You have to trust me,” Phillip started to say, the words tumbling out in a rush. “I can’t take any of it back, but I’m different now. Better--”

Phineas held up a hand, cutting him short. “I know,” he replied. “Only a genuine Phillip Carlyle could pull off being simultaneously so prudish and so charming. I’m glad you’re all right.”

The nerves that had been slowly accumulating at the base of his neck since Phineas had awakened released a degree or two, and Phillip felt his tense shoulders relax. “You too, Phin. I’m so relieved you’re awake. I was starting to get worried.”

Phineas had managed to get his elbows under himself and was gradually working his stiff body into a sitting position with his back against the headboard. Phillip considered stopping him, but knew it would do little good; Phineas’ mind was made up. Once he had straightened himself out, he looked around the room with sharp eyes, orienting himself. His gaze landed on the book that still sat forgotten on the rug next to the bed.

“Did you stay with me?” he asked. “I must not have been very entertaining company.”

Phillip shrugged. As he spoke, he found himself looking away, unable to hold Phineas’ eyes. “You stayed with me through worse.”

He heard Phineas shift next to him, but he was surprised when he moved closer instead of retreating. His warm roughened fingertips passed over Phillip’s turned cheek. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “It’s all over now.”

“But for how long?” Phillip replied. He shook his head, knowing it would drive away Phineas’ attempt at comfort and feeling that it must be for the best. “It will come back.”

Phineas was not deterred. He withdrew his hand only until Phillip had grown still once more, then he returned to touch his hair, stroking the loose and unpomaded strands. “Then you’ll fight it. I know you will. Whatever it promises you, it’s not real.”

Phillip wavered, feeling himself drawn helplessly towards Phineas’ coaxing touch. His fingers brushed past his temple and Phillip was momentarily disoriented. He lowered his head to Phineas’ chest, and it served to center him. “What do you know about what it promises?” he asked softly.

“Nothing,” Phineas admitted. “There’s a lot about you I don’t know, but there is one thing I figured out a long time ago: you want very badly. You’re striving towards something, or maybe running away from something. At times, they can look the same. It comes when you think you’ve lost the thread, when it seems you’re not making any progress at all. The next time it does, you just tell it you’ll make your own way.”

Of course, Phineas would make it sound easy. Phillip wanted to be irritated by that, but he could not quite manage it. He lay still beneath Phineas’ hand, as it explored the back of his neck, dipping beneath his collar.

“You sound like you genuinely believe it was real,” Phillip said quietly. “I’m not even sure that I believe it, and it happened to me. Was there really a spirit inside me? Are such things even possible?”

“I don’t know everything that’s possible,” Phineas admitted. “But I know that there are times in all our lives when our very sense of who we are is upended. I think we lose something then, some piece of the image we all carry of ourselves. When that happens, it becomes very easy for something else to take its place. Something we’re afraid of, or jealous of, or guilty over. Whatever that may be for you, kid, it’s not all there is to you. I’m so sure of that, I’ll stake my life on it.”

He already had. Phillip knew that already, did not need to be reminded of all Phineas had risked while Phillip dashed about in the snow, or bolted into the flames like an impetuous idiot. Phineas had more than proved his conviction, and his mettle, but being reminded of it again prompted Phillip into a deeper and stiller silence. 

He had been a wastrel and a dilettante, failing even to play the part of a callow playboy with conviction. None of that had mattered to Phineas. He had seen something else in him, something more. A better version of Phillip Carlyle that he had never stopped believing existed, even when Phillip had been at his worst, barely human.

He raised himself on his arms so he could look Phineas in the face. He studied it for a long time, but Phineas’ expression was pleasantly neutral, half-smiling, betraying no embarrassment or agony over his intimate impromptu confession.

“Something like that happened to you, too,” Phillip said at last. “You lost a part of yourself.”

“Yes,” Phineas said. “A long time ago.”

“There’s a lot I don’t know about you, isn’t there?”

“You know what matters for right now,” Phineas said. “You know how I feel about you. The rest, I’m not quite ready to tell just yet.”

“Of course. That’s your right.”

“I will, soon. It’s time I got it all out.”

Phillip nodded, taking it in. Whatever Phineas had kept hidden this long, Phillip intended to treat it with the gravity it deserved. But when it seemed no confessions were forthcoming, he gradually became aware of how close the two of them were on the bed, how he could feel the shape of Phineas’ body through the heaps of blankets, like the pea in the princess’ mattress.

“There are things I need you to know, too. About me.”

Phineas must have detected something in Phillip’s tone, because his eyebrows went up, intrigued. “Can I attempt a guess?” he said, and before Phillip could even wonder if he should protest or not, Phineas had drawn him forward into a kiss.

He had been waiting for it, Phillip realized, as his lips parted to receive him. He felt Phineas’ tongue sweeping into his mouth: A good kisser, a good man. Nothing short of excellent at anything he set his hand to.

Phillip forced himself to draw back before he got out of his depth. Phineas was watching him inquisitively, expectantly.

“It’s something like that,” Phillip told him, feeling his cheeks grow flush. “Though before we discuss it further, you need a bath.”

Phineas surprised him again; he actually laughed. “Oh, no.”

“A change of clothes wouldn’t hurt matters either,” Phillip said. “Then we can hold a regular symposium on the topic.”


	17. Chapter 17

In the days that followed, Phillip found himself drawn with increasing frequency and urgency into Phineas’ orbits around the manor.

They kissed often, with reckless abandon and only a cursory concern at being chanced upon by the Finnish maids. Passing each other in the hall or meeting on the way to the table for dinner, Phillip would more often than not find himself swept up by their sudden proximity. Before he knew it, he was in Phineas’ arms, with Phineas’ mouth on his, or perhaps it was his on Phineas’. It was almost always impossible to tell who began it.

Time ground to a halt. Those stolen intimacies might have lasted an instant or an hour; Phillip would not have been able to tell the difference. Inevitably, some noise from another part of the house, or simply a shared intuition that someone might see, broke them apart. Were it not for the racing of his heart and the bloom of heat on his cheeks, Phillip would scarcely have even believed it happened.

He assumed Phineas was biding his time, waiting until his strength was fully recovered, before mounting a more sustained attack. However, as the weeks wore on with little more than those abrupt and intermittent affections to sustain him, Phillip began to wonder if there wasn’t more to it. Phineas Barnum, a man who had never shrunk from a challenge in his life, was clearly avoiding him.

After everything that had happened, Phillip supposed that he could not blame his mentor for exercising caution. It might have been for the best to let him work through his hesitation in his own time. However, there was the matter of his own growing urgency. Though his mind and his good manners urged him towards prudence, his body was a different story entirely. That was unwilling to wait much longer.

He dutifully kept himself busy. Now that he had discovered Phineas’ neglected library, Phillip had dedicated himself to making good use of it. There was little else to do while he waited to see what would come next, and so he had been slowly making his way through the Romans. It felt good having time to read, though Phillip was admittedly surprised he had been so strongly and immediately drawn to those volumes from his schoolboy days. It had not been a happy time in his life.

Whatever regrets he may have had, he bore no ill-will towards those poets who had once made him sweat declensions and bleed clausulae. Having worked his way through Horace, he moved onto Catullus, without so much as pausing to catch his breath in between.

The rest of the household had retired to bed by the time Phillip left the library with the new volume in his hand. He had to pass by Phineas’ room on the way to his own, and he was surprised to see a sliver of light leaking out from under the closed door.

Phineas was still awake. To his alarm, Phillip realized he had no idea what he might possibly be doing up at this time of night. He hesitated before the door for a long moment, considering whether to knock, or even just let himself in. He had no pretenses for doing so, only the burning need to find out if there was anything for them beyond fumbling, intermittent, stolen kisses.

Phillip shifted the volume of Catullus to his other hand so that he could run his fingers nervously through his hair while he debated. He had already made his decision, he realized, feeling the weight of the book he held. The Romans favored bold and decisive action, even in the face of heavy odds.

Smoothing the lapels of the corded cardigan sweater he wore, Phillip raised his hand and rapped lightly on the door.

There was silence from within for a long time, long enough that Phillip had begun to feel a little silly for his presumption. Then he heard the sound of a single soft footfall from within, and the door swung open a crack.

Phineas was dressed in his bedclothes, but he looked wide awake. “Didn’t know you were still up, kid.”

“I didn’t know you were,” Phillip replied. He met Phineas’ eyes and held his gaze; it was nice, feeling himself the object of his attention.

“I was just thinking some things over.”

“Me too,” Phillip said. Emboldened now that Phineas was actually here, Phillip inclined his head slightly, wordlessly asking to be let in. 

Phineas hesitated only a moment before stepping aside. He held the door open only far enough to let Phillip slip through sideways, and shut it again immediately behind him, perhaps having already intuited that Phillip had not come with entirely pure intentions.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked.

Phillip paused before looking back at him. Though he had been in this room plenty of times while Phineas was insensate, and it was little changed in the interim, being invited inside now was like being granted access to some secret inner sanctum. He passed a sweeping look over the familiar furnishings, and then turned on his heel to face Phineas.

“Perhaps the same thing that is on yours.”

He saw Phineas’ hands flex at his side, knotting up into fists and then immediately relaxing, like a twitch of nervous energy that he had to expend before he could move on.

“You might be right about that,” he said at last. “Why don’t we have a seat?”

Phillip followed him to the divan by the window. The curtain had been left open, letting in a stream of sharp cold moonlight. The sky was clear and cloudless, the storm having finally broken.

Taking a seat at Phineas’ side - close enough to touch but leaving a respectable space between them - Phillip set his book neatly on his pressed knees, like the good boy he was trying so very hard to be.

“What’s that?” Phineas asked, nodding towards the volume.

“Call it nostalgia,” Phillip replied. He flipped the book open, selecting a page at random. Though he had done it on a whim, he found himself miraculously confronted with the very words that had eluded him all this time. Drawing a deep breath while he took them in, he read cleanly, precisely:

“ _O quid solutis est beatius curis,_  
_cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino_  
_labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum,_  
_desideratoque acquiescimus lecto?_  
_hoc est quod unum est pro laboribus tantis._ ”

Phineas shook his head and laughed. “It’s all Greek to me, kid.”

As Phillip closed the book once more, Phineas reached over, resting a hand over his and pinning it to the cover. “Listen, I wasn’t born yesterday. I know what you want. I even have it pretty well figured out where all of this is going.”

Phillip’s heart fluttered in his breast, but when he spoke his voice was steady. “If you want space, I can’t deny you that. You saved my life, Phineas. You’re my champion, my chevalier. I’m not about to forget that any time soon. I just want to know where I stand with you. We don’t have to rush anything.”

“It’s not that,” Phineas said. Phillip chanced a glance at him and saw that he was looking straight ahead, his jaw set as if he were stubbornly meeting a challenge. “You have to know, I’m crazy for you, Phillip. But it took me so long to realize it, and even then it never occurred to me to wonder if you might have certain feelings in return. Then, suddenly, we ended up here, and I never had any time to make sense of it.”

To write it into the great story of his life was more like it, Phillip imagined. All of this, then, was simply a matter of editorial control. Once Phineas decided upon the necessary revisions, they could all progress neatly towards the scripted ending.

Or so Phillip thought, until he heard Phineas say quietly, “You’ve been through this all before, haven’t you?”

“I’ve never been precisely where I am right now,” Phillip replied, but he knew even as he spoke the words they were not what Phineas wanted to know. He sucked in a deep breath and continued, “My preferences were never a secret to those who made it their business to know. You’re not the only lover I’ve had.”

“Fellows too, I imagine?” Phineas asked, making a great effort to sound casual and failing at it miserably.

Now they were getting to the heart of the matter, Phillip realized. His poor, proud Phineas; he knew he was outmatched in terms of experience and his tender ego could not bear it. Phillip felt a sudden blossoming of affection towards him.

“You won’t be the first man I’ve been with, Phineas. But you’re the first that I have loved.”

A flush spread over Phineas’ cheeks, crimsoning his flesh all the way to the temples. “Ah,” he muttered. “That’s good to know.”

Phillip should have been insulted by such an understated reaction, but he was instead inexplicably charmed. Exasperated, as much by his own credulity as he was by Phineas’ reserve, Phillip leaned back against the arm of the couch and said, “The polite thing would be to respond in kind.”

“I know,” Phineas said quickly, shaking his head as if to drive the fog from his thoughts. “I want to.”

Phillip’s eyebrows went up as he watched Phineas’ mouth, waiting for it to form the words. When he made no move to speak, Phillip couldn't resist chiding him, though gently. “Can you say it or not?”

He didn’t expect to be able to squeeze much blood out of this particular stone. Phineas was hopelessly material. Though he was not without his romantic side, the lofty declarations that passed for affection among the disaffected youths of high society were not in his vocabulary. Love, no doubt, came harder to Phineas than it did to most.

Phillip was disappointed, but not about to let it spoil what they did have. He was in the act of opening his mouth to say as much when Phineas turned on him all at once. 

“I love you,” he blurted out. “From the first moment. For all time. I should have told you ages ago, consequences be damned. Phillip, knowing you has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.”

This time, it was Phillip’s turn to be struck mute, cowed by the enormity of Phineas’ confession. He knew what it must have cost him to get it out. He, who had always been so stubbornly proud of his independence, his ability to get by without anything from anyone.

Though his heart was pounding frantically, Phillip’s hand did not tremble as he reached over to set it atop Phineas’. His voice was soft, steady, when he said, “If that’s true, my chevalier, then you need never be ashamed of anything you do with me.”

Phineas seemed to take his meaning. He leaned forward, finding Phillip’s lips with his own. Kissing him, as they had not a few times before, but Phillip knew at once that something was different this time. The old familiar sensations - Phineas’ strong hands around his waist, his tongue sweeping the inside of his mouth - felt brand new. It seemed to Phillip as if Phineas had found some wild undiscovered country deep within him, and claimed it as his own.

Winding his hands in Phineas’ lapels, Phillip reclined onto his back. He felt Phineas’ weight settle over him, pushing him into the cushions. When he leaned back for a split second, freeing their mouths, all Phillip could do was gasp out, “Oh, God…”

Phineas descended on him again, kissing the white column of Phillip’s throat, licking at the sensitive juncture where his neck and shoulder met. Phillip wrapped his arms around Phineas’ shoulders, threading the fingers of one hand into the thick waves of his hair. He moaned helplessly as Phineas nipped at his earlobe, leaving a little shock of pain in his wake.

Phineas passed his tongue over the same spot, and then pulled back a fraction of an inch, his breath cool against the dampness.

Phillip’s cock stiffened against his trousers, pushing against Phineas’ sharp hip bone as it hardened. Gasping, Phillip twisted his body to bring them closer together. He could feel the heat of Phineas’ body, burning him even through two layers of clothing. How easy it would be to forget, how welcome to ravel out into this moment. To leave his former self behind and become something transcendent, just as Phineas had always promised him.

No, no, he didn’t want to lose himself like that. Once, it would have been welcome; he had longed for nothing more than to stop existing as the flawed body and mind that he was. No longer, though. He had finally found himself, and he could not risk losing that precious knowledge again. Plucking up his courage, Phillip set a hand on Phineas’ chest, easing him back. “Please, not like this.”

To his admitted surprise, Phineas pulled away at once, so quickly it was almost as if he were recoiling. Still worried about doing something wrong, Phillip realized, and he was swift to assure him that nothing could be further from the truth.

“It was good,” he said. “It’s almost frightening, the things you can do to me.”

He reached out and took Phineas’ hand, raising it to his mouth, tracing the contours of his elegant fingers with his lips. “I want you. But not if we are going to treat it as tawdry, or shameful. Then it will always seem wrong, like something we only stole.”

Phineas looked startled for a second, but recovered his humor in record time. “You were the one who started it.”

Phillip rolled his eyes. “Just take me to bed, you brute.”

“Whatever you say, kid.” 

Phineas climbed off him, immediately reaching back to offer Phillip his hand. As he followed him to his feet, straightening his twisted cardigan around his hips, Phillip became aware that Phineas’ eyes were drawn to the bulge in the front of his trousers.

“It’s yours,” Phillip assured him. He guided the hand entwined with his own downward, urging Phineas’ fingertips to brush over the spot, feeling how hard he was already. “I’m all yours. Let's just do things properly for once.”

“I understand,” Phineas said, seriously. He tugged Phillip over towards the bed, pausing before they reached it and taking him in his arms with the tenderness of a bridegroom on his wedding night.

Phillip shuddered, pressing into his embrace, finding his lips once more and kissing them until he was out of breath. Phineas’ hands went to the buttons of his sweater, unfastening them down the front. Phillip shrugged out of the garment impatiently, letting it fall to the floor, so Phineas could start all over again on his shirt.

The edges of the fabric parted over his chest, revealing a ribbon of pale skin that ran unbroken from waist to throat. Phineas backed away a step, his calf bumping against the edge of the mattress where he sat down hard.

Phillip was amused by his fumbling until Phineas leaned forward and began to explore his uncovered chest with his mouth. The first touch of his lips against the sensitive skin over his navel, up between his pectoral muscles, set Phillip’s head to swimming and washed away all else from his thoughts. His hands came to rest on Phineas’ shoulders, neither pulling him closer nor pushing him away.

Emboldened by the touch, Phineas pushed Phillip’s shirt off his shoulder so that it dropped down to his elbows like a shawl. His lips found a nipple, which his tongue flicked out to trace, causing it to draw up hard and taut against Phillip’s chest. Phineas caught it between his teeth, biting down with a barely restrained violence that was right up against the border of pain.

Phillip’s breath hissed between his teeth, his hand came up to clutch at Phineas’ hair, pulling him closer. He gradually became aware of Phineas’ fingers working at the front of his trousers, easing the buttons open. There was no hint of doubt or uncertainty, nothing to betray the lack of experience that had bedeviled his thoughts up to this point. When he had loosened the fabric enough, Phillip’s erect cock sprang free, and Phineas took it in his hand without so much as a moment’s hesitation.

He did not close his fist around the shaft to stroke it, but rather let it lay in his palm a moment, feeling its throbbing pulse. Phillip gasped and pressed the heel of his hand to his lips, stifling a few words that were less than gentlemanly.

“Please, Phineas. You can’t tease me anymore.”

“Sorry,” Phineas replied, taking the words more seriously than Phillip had intended them. He moved his hand up the length of Phillip’s cock, sweeping his thumb over the head when he reached it, smearing the bead of liquid that had gathered there. While Phillip looked on, he brazenly raised the slick finger to his mouth and licked it.

Phillip shuddered, feeling a flower of molten pleasure unfurl its petals in the pit of his stomach. “You always have to cause a scene,” he whispered.

“I can’t help it,” Phineas replied. “I want all of you.”

“Then let me help you with that,” Phillip said, his voice raw as velvet rubbed against the grain. He stepped forward, planting his hands on Phineas’ shoulders and urging him onto his back.

Phineas’ breath caught, but he obeyed, reclining onto his back and swinging his legs onto the bed. Phillip let his trousers drop and kicked them off before climbing into bed, swinging one leg over so that he was kneeling astride Phineas’ hips.

“Jesus…” Phineas rasped, his hands coming to rest on Phillip’s hips, steadying him before moving down his thighs, stroking their firm contours.

Phillip’s lips twitched into a smile. He lowered himself onto Phineas’ hips, enjoying his commanding position. Phineas certainly did look different from this angle. When he leaned back on his heels, he felt Phineas’ erection pushing up against the inside of his thigh, hard and insistent.

“I didn’t even touch you,” he said, rocking his hips, teasing him. “I admire your vitality, Phineas.”

“I’m full of surprises,” Phineas replied. 

He reached for Phillip’s cock again, but Phillip swatted his hand away. “Undress already.”

Phineas’ hands lingered a moment longer on Phillip’s hips, taking a moment to trace the curves of his pelvis, encircling his waist. Phillip’s eyes were fixed on his face, watching the minute shifts of muscles in his face: his lips slightly parted, pupils so dilated that they made his wide eyes look almost black.

He withdrew slowly, deliberately, to undo the buttons of his bedclothes. He shrugged out of the shirt, revealing broad shoulders, a chest still solid from a lifetime of labor. Phillip’s eyes were drawn to the hollows of Phineas’ collarbones, as dramatic and sculpted as an Italian marble.

Phillip licked his lips hungrily, raising himself on his knees so he could help Phineas out of his pajama bottoms.

His cock was elegant and tapered, a sturdy spire thrusting out before him. Phillip took a deep breath, his eyes traveling over Phineas’ waiting loins.

“What shall we do with this?” he said in a thick voice, reaching out to stroke his fingertips over the shaft, around the curve of the head. “Should I use my mouth on it? Or do you deserve more?”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Phineas managed. His chest was rising and falling rapidly, and his hands were knotted in the sheets as if that was all that was keeping them from grabbing Phillip and throwing him down.

That would not have been so bad, but Phillip supposed Phineas had exerted himself more than enough lately. He was due for a nice, long rest. “You won’t,” Phillip assured him, moving back into Phineas’ lap, straddling his well-formed hips.

He spat on his palm and then reached down between his own legs to slick it over Phineas’ cock. He heard Phineas gasp, saw him bite down on his lower lip so hard that the red skin turned white. 

“It’s not like we’ve never gotten by on spit and a prayer before, my chevalier,” Phillip said. Grasping Phineas’ cock at the base, he lowered himself down onto the waiting shaft.

There was a moment of sharp, stretching pain. It was inevitable, and it dissipated quickly when he heard Phineas moan in shocked pleasure. He managed to gasp out, “Phillip, my God--” and Phillip started to move his hips. Hearing his name like that, in the mouth of a man like this, did wonders for his motivation.

He raised himself slowly on his knees, allowing Phineas’ cock to slide out of him until only the tip was still inside. Then he abruptly lowered his body again, taking it all the way to base. He went slowly at first, wanting to feel every inch.

It should have hurt, but it didn’t. Phillip was beyond pain, lifted above anything but the exquisite pleasure that came with finally being together like this. It was what he had dreamed about before he even knew he wanted it, what he had longed for before he even recognized that something was missing.

He arched his back, bending over Phineas’ body and bringing their lips together. It changed the angle of their thrusts so that the next time he pushed back onto Phineas’ cock, pleasure shot through him, racing up his spine and filling his head with an explosion of stars.

They kissed, messily, missing each other’s mouths as much as they found them. Phillip was aware that he was making curious sobbing pleading noises; he was unable to stop them and he didn’t care.

“Say it again,” he gasped into Phineas’ mouth.

“I’ll say anything,” Phineas told him. “Anything you want.”

Phillip’s stomach felt tight and hot. The sensation was spreading all through him, threatening to overwhelm all else. He was right on the edge, his toes up against the precipice. In a moment, he would have no choice but to fall, but before he did, he gasped out, “I love you.”

Phineas came inside him, a hot pulse that filled him utterly. A moment later, Phillip felt his own climax wash over him.

The world dissolved into darkness. When Phillip came to, he realized he had fallen limp over Phineas’ body. His head was pillowed on the older man’s shoulder, his damp hair fanned over his face.

He lay there a moment, catching his breath, until he felt Phineas’ trembling hand caress the back of his neck.

“Kid…” Phineas started. His voice was unsteady, and Phillip felt his throat hitch as he swallowed hard. “Phillip. You’re incredible.”

“Yeah?” Phillip whispered. He drew a breath, inhaling the musky scent of Phineas’ skin, so uniquely his own.

“I love you,” Phineas went on, quickly. “You know that, don’t you? I love you.”

Phillip felt his throat seize. He blinked furiously, against the utterly frivolous and senseless tears that came to his eyes. When he had composed himself a little, he lifted himself on his elbows.

“That’s the one thing I could never doubt.” He dipped his head and kissed Phineas’ lax lips. They were slow to stir in response, but when they did he returned the gesture in earnest. The kiss seemed to last a long time, but Phillip could not be sure. Time slowed and stopped and ran in strange ways when they were together.

When Phineas at last released him, Phillip looked down into his eyes and realized that they were calm now. The tense little line that he always carried between them had smoothed away. It would be a mistake, though, to think that he was not still on his guard, not still keeping a few things back for himself.

“What do we do now?” Phillip asked.

Phineas laughed. “I’m not as young as I used to be, but if you give me half an hour I can show you.”

“That is tempting,” Phillip replied. “But you know that’s not what I meant. I’m still with you, Phineas. No matter what you decide to do.”

“Ah, I see. You’re wondering if I’ll retire from show business and take a full time position in your bed.”

Phillip’s cheeks grew hot and he knew he was blushing, much to Phineas’ amusement.

“As generous as your offer may be, I’m not quite ready to give up the glamorous life yet,” he went on. “But I have been thinking of trying something new.”

“What’s that?” Phillip asked.

“Maybe some social work,” Phineas said. “It’s high time the two of us spread some of this good fortune around.”

“That’s a surprisingly conventional choice,” Phillip said, kissing him. His tone was airy, his lips light, and yet he felt that there was something unspoken in Phineas’ words, an allusion to the secrets that remained between them, the past that could not be put away, the darkness that they both still carried within.

It did not concern him, not now. For the first time, Phillip earnestly believed that, one day, even if it was years down the line, all would be well.

“I’ll do my best not to bore you,” Phineas said.

“You won’t,” Phillip assured him. “Social work it shall be, if that’s what you want. As long as we do it together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap for The Ifrit. Thanks to everyone who read and commented, especially Living Proof who has been there for every chapter with really thoughtful and interesting things to say, and Schizanthus who swept in to edit the last few chapters. They're really better because of her. Also, a special thanks to a certain long-suffering IRL friend who named all the original characters as part of some bizarre fandom hazing ritual that I cooked up for her.
> 
> It's been fun being Solidus420 for a while, but I usually write under the name Greekhoop if you want to check me out over there, or TheMothman if you are interested in very self-indulgent Final Fantasy XV fic.


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